Essentials  ©/  < 
MUNiTY  Efficiency 


ROBERT  PERRY  SHEPHERD,  A.M.,  PH.D. 


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Essentials  of  Community 
Efficiency 


A  Statement  of  the  Human  Forces  and  Factors  Inrolyed 
in  Making  Effective  in  American  Communities, 
Ideals   and  Principles   and  Practices   of 
Social   Responsibility   and  Com- 
munity Welfare 


By 
ROBERT  PERRY  SHEPHERD,  A.M.,Ph.D. 

Author  of 

"Turgot  and  the  Six  Edicts,"  "Religious  Pedagogy," 

"Commentary   on   the   Pentateuch,"   and 

"Hana-Book  on  Teacher  Training" 


Printed  for  the  Author 

by 

THE  ABINGDON  PRESS 

Chicago 


Copyrighted  by 

ROBERT  PERRY  SHEPHERD 

1916 


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Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/essentialsofcommOOsheprich 


Contents 

Page 

Preface    XI 

CHAPTER  I.     THE  NEW  AGE 

Introductory  Definitions  and  Explanations    1 

Social  Service — Social  Responsibility — Efficiency 
— Community — Illustrated  and  Enforced  by 
War 2 

American  Leadership — Experiments  with  Com- 
munity Organization — Necessity  of  Local  Wak- 
ening         6 

Social  Efficiency  Idea  Underlying  Education — 
Education  by  War   8 

Practical  Helps  and  Hindrances — New  Civics — 
Maternal  Conscience — Drift  of  Sentiment — 
Changes  in  Religious  Ideals — Newspapers — 
Lack  of  Local  Initiative 10 

Efficiency  a  Local  Growth — Human  Inefficiency — 
Dependence  Upon  New  Generations — New 
Spirit  in  Schools — Place  of  Parental  Instincts. .      16 

Military  and  Moral  Preparedness — Power  of 
Community  Sentiment  Organized 20 

CHAPTER  IL     IDEAS  AND  INSTITUTIONS 

Group  Interests — Community  Institutions   24 

Report  of  a  Battle   26 

Community  Groups 29 

CHAPTER  IIL     THE  EDUCATIONAL 

COMMUNITY 

Eye-Minded  Education — Destruction  of  Energy. .     32 

T 


Realities  and  S3mibols — The  Stream  of  Human 
Reality   34 

Collapse  of  the  Old  Education — Schools,  Abstract 
and   Concrete — Modern   School   Work   Shops..     37 

Schools  in  Homes — Recent  Discoveries — Defini- 
tion of  Education  41 

Rural  Schools  and  Health — Use  of  School 
Funds    43 

Schools  Robbing  Communities — Community  Use 
of  Schools — New  Test  of  Teacher's  Value — 
Communities  as  Schools — School  Help  to  Com- 
munities    , 46 

Civic  Use  of  School  Children — School  Boards — 
Vocational  Education — Physical  Education — 
School  the  Year  Round SO 

CHAPTER  IV.    THE   CHILD   COMMUNITY 

Biology  Giving  a  New  Viewpoint — Make-Up  of 
the  Child  Community 58 

Place  of  Child  Welfare  in  Community  Better- 
ment         62 

Pre-Natal  Welfare  Conditions — Community  Senti- 
ment on  Limitation  of  Parenthood — On  Condi- 
tions of  Labor  and  Social  Life •     63 

Infant  Mortality — Trained  Public  Nurses — Nur- 
series         68 

Public  Interest  in — Investment  in  Community 
Health    69 

Importance  of  Early  Childhood — Place  of  Play- 
Means  of  Insuring  World  Peace — Playgrounds.     71 

Adult  Ignorance  of  Child  Life — Human  Quality 
of  Childhood — Material-Gathering  Period 75 

CHAPTER   V.     THE  YOUTH   COMMUNITY 
The  Human  Problem — Tragedy  of  Parenthood — 

Law  of  Companionship  80 

Picture  of  Youth  in  Communities 84 


Need  of  Practical  Insight — Neglect  of  Youths . .     86 
Solutions     of     the     Problem — Institutional — Re- 
ligious— Male       Companionship — Female       Ig- 
norance         88 

Steps  in  Community  Solutions — Meeting  Human 
Needs 94 

CHAPTER  VI.    THE  PARENT  COMMUNITY 

Courtship,  Marriage,  and  Divorce  99 

Collapse  of  Home  and  Family  Life — Religious 
Solution — Nucleus  of  Wise  Parents  and  True 

Children 101 

Physical  and  Moral  Parenthood — False  Assump- 
tions— Need  of  Intelligent  Community  Senti- 
ment        108 

The  Social  Peril — Changed  Attitude  of  Physicians  113 
Community     Exercise     of     Moral     Parenthood — 
Closer   Ties  between   Parents  and   Teachers — 

Belated  Sex  Teaching  114 

Sex  Hygiene — Sex  Facts — Teaching  of  Sex  Hy- 
giene— Summary    119 

CHAPTER  VII.     THE  RELIGIOUS  COMMUNITY 
Popular    Distrust — Immediate    Need    of    a    Con- 
structive Message — Central  Place  of  the  Com- 
munity        123 

Fundamental  Questions — Abstractions  and  Specu- 
lative Religion — Human  Elements — One  Re- 
ligious Difficulty — Religion  and  the  Stream  of 

Human  Reality    124 

Jesus  and  Human  Realities   130 

"Billy"  Sunday  and  Protestantism 132 

The  World-Challenge  to  Religion — Simplicity  of 

the  Religion  Lived  by  Jesus  Christ 134 

Christian  Faith  and  Fellowship  a  Family  Life. .  . .    136 
Community  Religion  and  Community  Churches. . .  .137 

Community  Not  Church  the  Object  of  Effort 139 

Social  Service  and  Missions   141 


vn 


Religious  Instruction — Making  a  Righteous  So- 
ciety— Child-Centered  Religions — A  Community 
Task — Absolute  Need  for  Unified  Churches — 
Pointed  Demands — Crucial  Challenge  of  Re- 
ligious Instruction    143 

Religious  Instruction  Related  to  Humanized  Re- 
ligion— National  Interest — Successful  Experi- 
ments— Summary 148 

CHAPTER  VIII.     THE  COMMERCIAL 
COMMUNITY 

The  Economic  Motive — Results  of  Commercial 
Unpreparedness — Use  of  Facts 154 

Difficulties  of  Retail  Trade — New  Principles — 
Editorial  Opposition  to  Mail  Order  Business — 
Community  Inefficiency — Faulty  Store  Methods  156 

Local  Difficulties — Competition  in  Number  of 
Stores,  Invasions,  Stocks,  Out-of-Town  Trade 
— Department  and  Chain  Stores,  Mail  Orders, 
Credits 160 

Need  for  Community  Attention  and  Effort 166 

Creating  a  Commercial  Community — Concrete 
Efforts 167 

Systematic  Cooperation — Wasting  Money  and  En- 
ergy     170 

CHAPTER   IX.     THE   INDUSTRIAL 
COMMUNITY 
The  Age  of   Machinery — Industrial   Efficiency — 
Human    Elements — Scientific     Management    of 

Materials,  Machines,  and  Men  176 

Natural  Conditions  vs.  Artificial  Advantages....   180 

The  Case  of  M.— of  K 183 

Systematic  Cooperation  in  Community  Efficiency 
— Place  of  Industrial  Leaders — Blueprinting 
Community  Plans   : . .   187 

viii 


CHAPTER  X.    THE  AGRICULTURAL 
COMMUNITY 
The   New   Age   in   Agriculture — County   Agents' 

Primary  and  Secondary  Programs   193 

Soil  Fertility  and  Community  Efficiency 194 

Marketing    of    Products — Reason    for    Farmer's 

Individualism    196 

Rural  Accounting  and  Community  Efficiency....   199 
Systematic    Cooperation    in    Social    and    Educa- 
•  tion^l  Betterment — Equality  of  Social  Opportu- 
nity     201 

The  Retired  Farmer-Citizen  Problem — Reasons . .  205 
Bridging  the  Chasm  between  Farms  and  Towns..   209 

Absentee-Landlords  and  Tenants 210 

Remedial  Legislation 211 

Town  and  Country  Social  Intercourse 213 

County-Seat  Responsibility  for  the  County  Unit..   216 
Farmer's  Duties  toward  Towns 220 

CHAPTER  XL    THE  SOCIAL  COMMUNITY 
Place  of  the  Community  House — Recovery  of  So- 
cial Self-Respect  over  School  Board — Central- 
ized Schools   222 

Community  House  Activities 226 

Explanations 228 

CHAPTER  XII.     THE  POLITICAL  COMMUNITY 
Government  by  Neighbors — Political  Sanity — Pro- 
tection Against  Vested  Interests — Fitness  for 

Self-Government   •  257 

New  Political  Conditions — Maternal  Conscience, 
Child  Welfare,  Civic  Conscience,  Scientific 
Method,  Civic  Stewardship,  Community  Con- 
sciousness, Humanitarianism,  Religion,  Social 
Democracy — Community   Business    262 


Preface 

The  chapters  which  follow  contain  the  sub- 
stance of  lectures  which  I  have  been  delivering, 
some  of  them  for  a  number  of  years  past,  in 
helping  citizens  to  come  together,  look  over  the 
field  of  their  community  interests,  put  a  concrete 
program  of  betterments  before  themselves  and 
then  organize  the  community  for  realizing  their 
own  program.  All  of  the  lectures  have  been 
recast  in  the  light  of  current  events. 

In  giving  the  lectures  written  form  I  have 
tried  to  do  one  thing  in  a  definite  way,  namely, 
to  put  all  the  principles  of  community  effi- 
ciency in  a  human  setting  and  to  do  this  in  a 
way  which  would  be  both  readable  and  challeng- 
ing to  the  leaders  of  local  sentiment.  When  the 
lectures  are  delivered  from  the  platform  I  can 
make  use  of  illustrations  and  graphs  which  the 
printed  page  will  not  allow.  The  important 
thing  is  to  help  citizens  see  the  whole  of  their 
problem,  see  how  to  analyze  it  clearly  and  to 
direct  local  sentiment  to  constructive  ends. 

It  has  been  my  privilege  to  know  community 
conditions  quite  intimately  in  California,  Colo- 
rado, Kansas,  and  Illinois.  Community  organ- 
izations have  been  formed  as  a  result  of  our 


courses  of  lectures  in  Illinois,  Ohio,  and  Mich- 
igan. My  lecture  engagements  have  taken  me 
into  nearly  all  the  states  and  provinces  and  I 
have  accumulated  a  vast  mass  of  statistics  on 
community  life  and  organizations,  most  of  which 
I  have  purposely  omitted  from  this  book.  Where 
I  have  been  able  to  identify  the  sources  of  ma- 
terials used  I  have  done  so  in  the  text  and 
avoided  the  use  of  footnotes.  A  few  books  of 
especial  worth  to  the  theme  under  discussion 
have  also  been  referred  to  in  the  text. 

The  oral  lectures  are  all  "purpose"  addresses, 
designed  to  move  listeners  toward  a  definite 
objective.  I  have  allowed  myself  in  the  printed 
lectures  to  go  beyond  the  attitude  of  academic 
indifference  in  some  of  the  chapters,  because  of 
the  conditions  surrounding  all  American  com- 
munities and  the  decided  urgency  of  putting 
community  life  on  a  clear-cut  basis  of  matured 
plans.  Some  of  the  lectures  are  certain  to  meet 
some  opposition  but  whatever  is  unable  to  stand 
opposition  ought  not  to  stand.  Church  affairs, 
with  which  I  have  been  most  widely  associated 
for  many  years,  are  not  efficient  so  far  as  com- 
munity welfare  is  concerned.  The  only  way  to 
avoid  controversy  in  most  local  communities  is 
to  say  nothing  positively  constructive.  I  am 
urging  a  method  of  harmonizing  religious  differ- 
ences in  communities,  a  method  which  is  in 
active  use  successfully,  but  its  inevitable  tend- 
ency is  to  put  superfluous  congregations  in  the 


way  of  becoming  one  united  Church.  I  have  yet 
to  meet  one  minister  or  group  of  worshipers  will- 
ing to  admit  that  they  are  the  superfluous 
parties. 

The  work  of  community  efficiency  is  so  vast 
that  all  one  could  hope  to  do  within  reasonable 
limits  is  to  open  the  windows  and  call  attention 
to  outstanding  features  of  the  scene.  This  I 
have  tried  to  do  with  constant  emphasis  on  the 
human  elements  involved.  Others  might  do  the 
work  vastly  better  and  if  the  following  pages 
shall  inspire  anyone  to  put  the  material  they 
need  into  the  hands  of  citizens  in  American  com- 
munities, and  set  forward  the  actual  work  of 
crystallizing  sentiment  on  the  well-being  of  all 
persons  in  each  locality,  my  labor  in  writing  this 
book  will  be  fully  compensated. 

After  putting  some  theories  of  community 
organization  to  a  more  extended  test  in  actual 
field  work,  I  plan  to  publish  a  work  on  social 
organization  including  some  actual  programs  of 
community  betterment,  as  worked  out  by  cit- 
izens in  a  series  of  mass  meetings,  and  such 
plans  of  action  as  have  proved  practicable  in 
making  the  programs  actual.  So  far  as  I  am 
able  to  learn  the  work  of  real  civic  evangelism  is 
in  its  infancy,  of  gathering  citizens  by  groups 
and  in  mass  assemblies  and  addressing  enlight- 
ened conscience  and  will,  putting  before  them 
the  challenge  of  their  own  present  community 
conditions  and  possibilities,  and  guiding  them  to 


make  up  their  own  welfare  program  and  efficient 
social  organization.  I  shall  be  glad  to  learn  of 
similar  experiments  and  of  the  successes  and 
failures  resulting  from  such  efforts. 

I  am  under  especial  obligations  to  Mr.  Samuel 
Lewis  and  to  my  wife  for  help  in  preparing  the 
manuscript,  reading  proofs,  and  making  the  work 
what  It  IS.  ROBERT  P.  SHEPHERD. 

Chicago. 


xW 


CHAPTER  I 

The  New  Age 

New  Tools.  A  new  set  of  words,  representing 
a  new  world  of  ideas,  had  begun  to  become  cur- 
rent in  America  when  the  war  thrust  some  of 
them  into  obscurity  and  others  into  unusual 
prominence.  The  words  and  ideas  which  sur- 
vive each  crisis  are  the  instruments  with  which 
the  new  world  of  human  relations  must  be  fash- 
ioned. 

Social  Service^  for  example,  had  come  to  be  a 
significant  term  in  some  religious  and  humani- 
tarian circles.  Its  meaning  was  vague  to  most 
Americans.  It  was  hazily  coupled  up  with  char- 
ity, donations  of  food  and  clothing  to  paupers,  a 
kind  of  beneficence  in  which  everybody,  of  course, 
ought  to  be  interested  sentimentally  if  not  prac- 
tically. Even  in  some  groups  where  the  phrase 
was  familiar,  Bishop  W.  T.  Sumner's  definition 
of  social  service  as,  "the  study  of  human  nature 
under  adversity  in  order  to  help  remove  the 
adversity,"  was  held  to  be  more  theoretical  than 
intensely  practical.  The  full  meaning  of  social 
service  had  not  yet  gripped  the  mind  of  either 
the  Church  or  the  non-Church  world. 

1 


2        Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

Social  Responsibility  was  even  less  generally 
understood.  It  was  commonly  understood  and 
agreed  that  society  was  responsible  for  the  care 
of  its  poor,  its  imbeciles,  criminals,  insane  per- 
sons, and  indigent  sick.  That  local  society,  town- 
ship or  town,  city  or  county,  was  responsible  for 
all  the  causes  of  poverty,  imbecility,  insanity,  and 
crime  produced  within  it  had  not  at  all  reached 
the  heart  of  citizens  generally.  They  were  more 
inclined  lazily  to  accept  the  mediaeval  way  of 
calling  each  of  these  cases  "an  act  of  God."  Soci- 
ety was  responsible  for  the  education  and  pro- 
tection of  all  of  its  members — this  much  was 
easily  accepted  as  a  general  principle..  But  when 
responsibility  was  drawn  in  toward  particulars, 
like  the  duty  to  educate  and  protect  child  and 
women  employees,  to  educate  and  protect  folk 
and  those  yet  to  live  from  venereal  diseases  and 
all  preventable  maladies,  to  educate  and  protect 
mothers  and  provide  pensions  for  them,  and  spe- 
cific applications  of  social  responsibility  like 
these,  there  was  a  very  general  disposition  to 
shift  social  responsibility  to  the  capitol  or  the 
courthouse.  Hot  public  debate  over  the  right 
to  recall  judicial  decisions  which  manifestly 
worked  social  injustice  did  more  than  any  other 
one  thing  to  turn  the  serious  mind  of  citizens 
generally  to  consider  the  human  basis  of  a  com- 
munity's duty  to  its  members.  The  mind  of  the 
nation,  at  all  events,  was  not  yet  clear  as  to 


The  New  Age  3 

what  social  responsibility  actually  meant  and 
what  all  it  implied. 

Efficiency  was  a  clear-cut  and  meaningful  term 
in  most  industrial  circles  and  in  some  com- 
mercial relations.  Popularly  it  was  either  a 
source  of  cartoons  and  pert  paragraphs  or  a  shib- 
boleth of  a  fad,  something  which  threatened 
more  or  less  directly  to  interfere  with  familiar 
habits,  pet  customs,  and  traditional  practices.  It 
was  regarded,  on  the  whole,  as  a  fine  thing  to 
read  about  in  current  literature  but  a  distinctly 
unpleasant  thing  to  confront  and  incorporate 
into  individual  life  or  business  administration. 
As  applied  to  local  and  state  governments,  local 
and  general  Church  administration,  charity  or- 
ganizations and  general  social  institutions,  effi- 
ciency had  a  long  way  before  it  to  win  popular 
approval. 

Community  had  become  a  catchword.  Every- 
body was  supposed  to  know  .precisely  what  the 
community  is,  where  to  find  it  and  how  to  manip- 
ulate it.  The  idea  came  closer  to  folk  generally 
and  enterprises  of  all  sorts  adopted  the  designa- 
tion. Street  carnivals,  chowder  parties,  and  all 
sorts  of  performances  were  staged  as  community 
projects,  "to  build  up  the  community."  Locality 
and  community  commonly  meant  the  same  thing. 
A  great  many  people,  even  until  now,  and  not 
all  of  them  identified  with  the  unthinking  herd 
of  humanity,  do  not  yet  comprehend  what  Pro- 

(2) 


4         Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

fessor  Peabody  might  have  meant  by  saying  that 
"the  discovery  of  the  community  was  the  great- 
est achievement  of  the  nineteenth  century:" 
Surely  the  community  is  here,  has  always  been 
here,  will  be  here  when  we  are  gone ! 

Suddenly,  behind  the  most  terrible  ring  of  iron 
ever  seen  on  this  planet,  appeared  a  most  aston- 
ishing community.  Seventy-eight  million  and 
more  souls  welded  by  a  sense  of  social  respon- 
sibility, dedicated  to  death  from  birth,  the  prod- 
uct of  a  century  of  discipline  in  community  wel- 
fare and  of  near  half  a  century  of  remorseless 
training  in  efficiency. 

The  hideously  destructive  power  of  this  com- 
munity cannot  hide  the  import, of  its  constitu- 
tion. Had  the  circumstances  been  such  that  its 
directing  minds  felt  free  to  use  the  compact 
community  only  in  conquests  of  peace  it  would 
have  been  an  even  more  formidable  conqueror  of 
the  world,  wholly  irresistible  if  beneficent  and 
constructive,  humanized  and  honest.  As  it  is, 
for  the  first  time  in  history,  the  interested  atten- 
tion of  all  the  people  on  the  globe  is  drawn  to 
the  place  where  one  world  is  dying  in  agony  and 
another  is  bloodily  being  born.  The  vague 
terms,  once  vague  here  and  almost  everywhere, 
are  baptized  with  such  a  baptism  as  is  given  to 
few  words  in  all  man's  history. 

Interest  is  heightened  in  America,  in  this 
"nation    made    by    its    schoolmasters,"   by    the 


The  New  Age  5 

knowledge  that  its  social  genius  and  organization 
were  given  to  it  by  a  country  school-teacher. 
Professor  Franklin  H.  Giddings  summarizes  the 
story  in  his  booklet,  "The  Western  Hemisphere 
in  the  World  of  To-morrow": 

It  is  time  that  Americans  were  reminded  that 
this  social  -  responsibility  -  efficiency  -  and-better- 
ment  idea,  destined  more  and  more  to  occupy  the 
attention  of  serious  men  and  women  of  every 
continent,  is  not  a  German  invention,  and  not  the 
product  of  any  other  nationality.  "In  spite  of  all 
temptations  to  belong  to  other  nations,"  the  man 
who  scientifically  developed  it  and  experimentally 
tried  it  out  was  an  American.  Next  after  Jona- 
than Edwards  and  Benjamin  Franklin  he  was,  I 
think,  the  greatest  American.  No  one  else  in 
our  history  can  make  out,  all  things  considered, 
quite  so  good  a  claim  to  third  place.  But  while 
Edwards  and  Franklin  are  remembered,  Benja- 
min Thompson  has  been  forgotten. 

So  was  created  one  half,  the  nonpolitical  half, 
of  Kultur,  that  wondrous  thing  which  all  the 
world  is  now  invited  to  admire.  The  other  half, 
the  political  half  of  Kultur,  is  a  philosophy  and 
a  habit,  a  habit  of  obeying  without  question  or 
protest  a  state  conceived  as  absolute,  supreme 
above  the  moral  law  as  above  statute  and  de- 
cision. Kultur  was  not  made  in  Germany.  The 
political  half  of  it,  as  everybody  knows,  was  made 
in  Italy,  and  formulated  by  Machiavelli.  The 
nonpolitical  half  of  it,  the  social  efficiency  half, 
which  all  the  world  will  yet  adopt  and  profit  by, 
was  made  in  Massachusetts  by  Puritan  faith,  con- 
science, frugality,  and  toil,  and  was  taken  to 
Bavaria  by  Benjamin  Thompson. 


6         Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

Community,  community  efficiency,  social  wel- 
fare, social  responsibility,  and  community  better- 
ment are  now  writ  in  red  for  the  reading  of 
mankind.  Wholly  apart  from  the  near  and  dis- 
tant causes  of  the  war,  the  merits  and  demerits  of 
the  struggle,  or  the  issues  which  are  at  stake  on 
the  outcome,  the  power  of  compact  and  efficient 
social  organization  has  exhibited  by  contrast  the 
fatal  weakness  of  individualist  democracy,  the 
haphazard,  every-man-for-himself  social  policy 
of  Great  Britain  and  America.  Events  wholly 
outside  have  conspired  to  put  America  in  a  posi- 
tion of  leadership  among  the  peoples  of  the 
earth — but  leadership  has  its  fixed  price.  Incom- 
petents are  never  leaders.  Bulk  of  wealth  may 
be  a  source  of  fatal  weakness  and  not  of  strength. 
Only  as  the  proved  ideals  of  power  are  built  into 
the  dominant  ideas  of  the  nation  will  aspirations 
of  leadership  among  the  nations  be  realized.  The 
traditions  and  present  mood  of  Americans  are 
not  favorable  to  paying  promptly  the  price  of 
constructive  leadership. 

The  farms,  stores,  offices,  and  houses  where 
Americans  live  and  do  their  thinking  are  a  long 
way  from  Europe,  vastly  further  than  the  mere 
miles  which  lie  between.  Apart  from  inven- 
tion and  industrial  exploitation  Americans  love 
the  familiar  and  fear  the  unfamiliar  as  much  as 
any  people  on  the  planet.  Efficiency  may  be 
decreed  by  imperial  fiat   in   Germany  just  as 


The  New  Age  7 

vodka  is  abolished,  as  a  Russian  drink,  by  im- 
perial ukase.  But  fiats  and  ukases  and  imperial 
decrees  are  permanently  unpopular  on  this  hem- 
isphere. Having  got  on  thus  far  withcmt  kings 
the  sovereign  go-as-you-please  citizen  of  America 
must  be  made  efficient  by  entirely  different  proc- 
esses. The  mere  mention  of  efficiency  in  matters 
of  personal  conduct  and  social  order  is  quite 
offensive  to  many  voters.  It  is  especially  ab- 
horred by  the  classes  which  thrive  on  the  shift- 
lessness  and  civic  carelessness  of  the  majority  of 
citizens.  Whole  states  have  been  known  to  rise 
and  give  conspicuous  rebuke  to  state  institutions 
whose  leaders  have  been  forward  to  go  out  and 
show  citizens  how  to  live  efficiently.  The  prin- 
ciples of  efficiency  can  be  introduced  in  factories, 
crafts,  and  commerial  enterprises  in  a  way  more 
nearly  approaching  European  fashions.  The 
compulsion  of  making  a  living,  of  holding  a  job, 
of  getting  wages,  leads  many  workers  to  adopt 
practices  of  getting  largest  results  from  least 
expenditure  of  effort  when,  left  to  themselves, 
they  would  scorn  suggestions  of  efficiency  with 
vengeful  glee. 

Experiments  have  been  made  during  recent 
years  to  organize  communities  for  more  efficient 
social  life.  Some  of  these  experiments  have  been 
made  under  government,  state,  and  university 
supervision,  some  under  private  and  local  initia- 
tive.   Only  those  who  have  had  actual  experience 


8        Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

in  trying  to  introduce  the  ideas  and  practical 
ideals  of  efficient  social  organization  into  Amer- 
ican communities  can  fully  appreciate  the  quan- 
tity and  quality  of  difficulties  which  have  to  be 
met  and  overcome.  Occasional  success  in  set- 
ting up  and  maintaining  flexible  and  effective 
organization  of  a  whole  community  is  the  one 
assurance  that  it  can  be  done.  Abnormal  in- 
crease in  motives  to  unusual  effort  opens  the  way 
far  more  than  it  has  been  in  the  past.  The  diffi- 
culties to  be  faced  are  only  eloquent  witnesses 
to  the  need,  and  the  surmounting  of  obstacles 
gives  zest  to  the  task,  increasing  the  compensa- 
tion of  energetic  citizens  who  see  the  task,  work 
at  it,  and  win  out. 

Discovering  the  community  was  a  very  great 
achievement  in  the  field  of  social  theory.  But 
the  discovery  remains  fruitless  in  large  measure 
till  the  discovery  becomes  local,  till  the  folk  who 
are  the  community  discover  themselves  as  a 
social  unit,  discover  the  social  power  of  the  unit 
and  learn  how  to  guide  that  power  to  the  great- 
est help  of  each  member  of  the  community  fam- 
ily. This  shaking  up,  "shooting  up"  in  some 
places,  of  community  consciousness,  waking  and 
sharpening  of  community  conscience  and  the 
guidance  of  the  community  will-to-Serve  make 
up  the  problem  of  community  efficiency  in 
America. 


The  New  Age  9 

Social  efficiency,  when  it  is  brought  closer 
and  stripped  of  its  formal  garb,  is  a  rather  famil- 
iar idea,  popular  in  fact,  in  American  communi- 
ties. It  wears  unfamiliar  airs  in  books  and 
speeches,  seeming  more  formidable  than  it  is. 
School  taxes  are  the  least  unpopular  of  all  public 
revenues  paid  by  American  citizens.  Common 
sense  approves  the  idea  that  society  as  a  whole 
has  a  duty  to  make  each  of  its  individual  parts 
a  self-respecting  and  socially  reputable  member 
of  the  body  social ;  to  provide  practical  education 
for  all  children  without  distinction,  and  to  pre- 
vent the  production  of  miscellaneous  misfits 
in  business  and  the  professions ;  to  prevent  need- 
less wastage  of  human  beings  through  the  igno- 
rant and  careless  handling  of  babies,  children, 
growing  and  grown  folk;  to  prevent  preventable 
disease,  deformity,  delinquency,  and  crime;  and 
to  provide  whatever  is  required  by  the  instinct 
of  the  whole  group  for  enriched,  fruitful  and 
prosperous  life.  The  direct  facts  involved  in 
community  efficiency  are  generally  admitted. 
But  we  are  too  young  in  social  experience  to 
trust  ourselves  and  each  other  to  do  all  the 
specific  acts  required  to  make  the  ideal  real. 

Some  of  these  ideas  are  far  older  than  the 
Bible,  reaching  back  into  the  ancient  civiliza- 
tions of  the  Nile  and  Euphrates  valleys.  They 
are  part  of  the  permanent  property  of  the  race. 
They  need  only  to  be  caught  up  into  the  work- 


10      Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

ing  minds  of  citizens  and  set  to  work  sanely  to 
play  a  vast  part  in  the  reconstruction  of  human 
relations  all  over  the  planet.  It  ought  not  to 
need  the  shock  and  jar  of  war  to  put  these  ideas 
forward  in  the  consciousness  of  citizens  in  every 
community  in  the  nation.  For  these  ideas  are 
the  moral  preparedness  apart  from  which  mili- 
tary preparations  will  be  but  a  repetition  of  the 
mockery  of  all  that  is  best  in  men.  Wholesale 
killings  have  actually  been  advocated  by  many 
Americans  as  the  only  way  by  which  to  waken 
the  people  of  the  nation  from  frivolities  and  put 
everybody  face  to  face  with  final  realities.  A 
nation  which  must  have  deluges  of  blood  to 
waken  it  or  keep  it  awake  has  no  business  to 
live.  The  surge  of  passion  for  the  welfare  of 
the  living  is  the  only  sure  urge  to  prosperous 
peace. 

SOME  PRACTICAL  HELPS  AND  HINDRANCES 

School  text-books  are  now  being  written  for 
pupils  in  the  grades  as  well  as  for  high  school 
and  college  students,  inspiring  all  the  young 
people  to  live  their  civics.  This  is  a  great  step 
toward  educational  sanity.  The  juiceless  study 
of  the  federal  and  state  constitutions  foisted  upon 
children  in  the  past  in  the  name  of  civics  was 
about  as  sensible  as  Aristotle's  logic  would  have 
been  if  used  as  a  fourth  reader.  The  oncoming 
citizenship   of  the  nation   is  better  trained   in 


The  New  Age  11 

practical  civics  than  the  off-going  men  and 
women  of  the  nation.  The  younger  generation, 
taught  more  purposeful  use  of  their  eyes  and 
ears  and  noses,  are  also  led  to  discover  for  them- 
selves the  power  of  group  effort  directed  to 
definite  ends.  The  force  of  such  discipline  in 
the  reshaping  of  human  affairs  here  and  abroad 
is  immeasurable. 

Maternal  conscience  is  now  projected  into  pub- 
lic affairs.  Because  the  feminine  mind  centers 
spontaneously  in  persons  and  personal  relations 
rather  than  in  abstract  principles  of  conduct,  the 
civic  interests  of  women  lead  them  toward  dif- 
ferent conclusions  than  have  the  impersonal 
schemes  of  male  citizens.  Universal  female  suf- 
frage may  or  may  not  come  but  practically  uni- 
versal influence  of  female  minds  in  American 
politics  is  already  come.  The  civic  sections  of 
women's  clubs,  civic  clubs  engineered  by  women, 
and  like  organizations  are  doing  vastly  more 
than  reading  papers  to  each  other  and  mildly 
agitating:  they  have  begun  shrewdly  to  organ- 
ize the  power  of  voluntary  associations  and  to 
insist  upon  higher  standards  of  social  decency 
and  protection  of  persons.  This  new  political 
tone  is  wholly  good. 

Drift  of  popular  sentiment  toward  community 
welfare  and  community  enterprises  was  fos- 
tered by  the  commercial  interests  into  whose 
charge  the  free  platform  has  come.    Community 


12      Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

action  is  essential  to  the  life  of  lyceum  and 
Chautauqua  managements.  Their  agents  have 
been  compelled  to  put  stress  upon  united  effort 
for  public  benefit.  The  direct  effect  of  this  argu- 
ment by  the  ubicfuitous  army  of  salesmen  has 
undoubtedly  done  more  to  create  community 
sentiment  than  the  work  of  "talent."  Charlie- 
chaplinized  public  frivolity  increases  the  demand 
for  platform  "pep"  and  "punch"  and  constant 
action  by  lecturers  on  both  the  lyceum  and 
Chautauqua  platforms.  And  modern  lyceum 
courses  are  quite  different  from  the  strong  lec- 
ture courses  of  the  last  generation.  The  presi- 
dent of  the  International  Lyceum  Association 
pleaded  earnestly,  in  September,  1915,  that  local 
lyceum  committees  should  be  persuaded,  by  all 
means,  to  include  at  least  one  serious  lecture  in 
their  season  course.  The  indirect  effect  upon 
community  life,  of  coming  together  to  listen, 
laugh,  learn  to  appreciate  the  higher  musical  and 
artistic  values  and  to  respond  together  to  appeals 
from  the  open  forum,  has  been  vast.  It  has 
helped  to  open  the  way  for  more  insistent  con- 
structive work  in  creating  and  crystallizing  com- 
munity sentiment. 

Churches,  in  the  past,  were  hindrances  and 
not  helps  to  making  communities  of  people  into 
self-conscious  social  units.  This  result  has  not 
been  because  of  religion  but  in  spite  of  it,  due 
not  to  the  religion  of  Jesus  Christ  but  to  the 


The  New  Age  13 

perfectly  normal  action  of  the  institution-loving 
instinct  in  men  which  is  forever  laying  hold  on 
fluid  movements  and  freezing  them  into  fixed 
organizations.  This  truth  deserves  wider  recog- 
nition, especially  by  those  who  are  fond  of  insist- 
ing that  religion  has  retarded  social  progress 
more  than  any  other  one  force  in  human  history. 
When  the  expression,  the  pulpit,  was  used  in  the 
past  it  expressed  a  fairly  uniform  quantity;  it 
has  no  uniformity  now.  Formerly  the  Church 
was  mainly  interested  in  what  happened  to  dead 
folk,  to  folk  who  died  many  centuries  ago  and 
to  the  folk  in  the  pews  who  shortly  would  be 
dead,  and  in  the  various  theories  of  how  it  hap- 
pened and  would  happen.  Divisive  groups 
neither  would  nor  could  find  grounds  of  agree- 
ment— they  didn't  like  each  other  to  begin  with. 
Communities  thus  torn  apart,  by  theories  of 
interpretation  covering  the  far  past  and  the  cer- 
tain future  past  the  grave,  could  not  be  brought 
to  see  or  care  much  about  the  community's 
babies  and  boys  and  girls  and  youths  in  the 
immediate  present;  to  get  old  sinners  headed 
away  from  a  hell  for  dead  folk  and  to  get  all 
the  saints  into  a  heaven  also  for  dead  folk 
bulked  so  big  that  no  one  paid  much  serious 
attention  to  the  hell  on  earth  which  live  folk 
were  making  for  themselves  and  each  other.  In 
other  words,  the  speculative  elements  of  theology 
excluded  the  practical  elements  of  religion  from 


14       Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

popular  consideration.  The  main  business  of 
Churches  was  sermons,  not  service.  The  main 
principle  of  Church  life  was  institutional  loyalty, 
not  human  loyalty  and  love. 

The  social  turntable  has  been  slipped  under- 
neath the  whole  machinery  of  the  Church  and 
the  whole  field  of  religion,  so  far  as  it  relates  to 
community  interests,  is  dependent  upon  indi- 
vidual local  leaders.  Neither  pulpit  nor  Church 
indicate  definite  quantities  or  qualities  to  be 
known  from  a  distance.  Many  Roman  Catholic 
pulpits  resound  with  sermons  which  would  grace 
any  Protestant  pulpit.  Pulpits  supposed  to  rep- 
resent the  quintessence  of  conservatism  are  filled 
by  impassioned  radicals.  Pulpits  supposed  to  be 
dedicated  to  forward-looking  social  progress  are 
filled  by  messengers  who  died  long  ago  but  still 
talk.  This  unsettledness  is  the  despair  of  eccle- 
siastics who  worship  the  status  quo  but  it  is 
one  of  the  chief  helps  to  those  who  have  seen 
"the  greatest  achievement  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury." The  religion  which  lives  in  live  folk 
prompting  them  to  love  all  other  live  folk, 
whether  they  like  them  or  not,  has  now  its 
chance  to  develop  community  consciousness,  con- 
science, and  efficiency. 

Local  newspapers  havp  largely  lost  their  for- 
mer place  of  power  in  shaping  community  senti- 
ment. Many  of  them  are  known  to  be  merely 
organs  of  some  individual  or  corporate  interest. 


The  New  Age  15 

All  of  them  are  compelled,  in  order  to  live,  to  be 
mainly  daily  or  weekly  bulletins  of  gossip, 
snappy  cynicism,  Mutt  and  Jeff  cartoons,  and  ad- 
vertisements. Anything  out  of  the  ordinary,  a 
dramatic  or  human  interest  incident,  is  eagerly 
welcomed ;  but  straight-out  appeals  for  principles 
and  projects  of  social  responsibility  and  com- 
munity efficiency  can  find  space  only  as  parts  of 
some  extraordinary  occasion.  In  some  localities 
the  newspapers  are  far  worse  than  pulpits  as 
promoters  of  public  interests,  hindrances  and  not 
helps.  In  other  localities  editorial  energy  is  the 
chief  community  asset. 

Individual  initiative  is  prized  among  Amer- 
icans but  it  is  an  unknown  quantity  to  most  of 
them.  At  its  highest  in  industrial  circles  where 
the  game  is  big  and  tense,  individual  initiative  is 
at  its  lowest  stage  in  simplest  duties  of  com- 
munity life.  A  very  flippant  song  was  kept  alive 
for  a  time  by  its  grotesque  falsity.  The  theme 
of  it  was,  "Every  man  's  a  devil  in  his  own  home 
town."  As  a  simple  matter  of  experience  and 
observation  every  man  is  most  a  coward  in  his 
own  home  town,  dqcile  as  a  sheep  before  the 
invisible  conventionalities  set  up  by  community 
sentiment,  reserving  all  his  bravado  and  devil- 
ment for  exercise  when  he  gets  away  from  home. 
Public  school  emphasis  on  uniformity  has 
whipped  all  notion  of  originality  and  energetic 
initiative  out  of  the  souls  of  most  of  the  present 


16      Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

generation  of  citizens.  They  suffer  indignities, 
perils  to  health  and  welfare,  shameless  betrayal 
of  public  trusts,  and  if  they  protest  against  out- 
standing educational  iniquities  or  social  wrongs 
they  get  in  little  groups  and  whisper  about  it  or 
go  off  in  solitude  to  swear.  The  chief  hindrance 
to  an  immediate  and  powerful  introduction  of 
ideals  of  social  responsibility  and  community 
welfare  is  the  terror  of  the  average  citizen,  of 
both  sexes,  of  the  wrath  of  the  god,  They-Say. 
The  handicap  can  be  turned  to  good  use  by  using 
large  groups  of  citizens  at  once,  taking  advan- 
tage of  mob  psychology  and  shaping  the  mob 
into  an  organized  body  of  live  sentiment. 

Such  practical  helps  and  hindrances  are  the 
rule  in  American  communities  of  less  than  twenty 
thousand  population  and  in  those  which  are  out- 
side the  influence  of  aggressive  industrial  influ- 
ences. The  city  problem  is  distinct  from  that  of 
the  smaller  community,  even  though  back  of 
them  both  is  the  one  human  problem  of  indi- 
viduality and  personality.  The  most  hopeful  in- 
dex for  the  smaller  cities  is  the  widespread 
agitation  for  scientific  management  of  public  busi- 
ness. Out  of  this  will  come  inevitably  an  exten- 
sion of  municipal  activity  and  oversight,  and  a 
publicity  to  challenge  the  serious  consideration 
of  all  citizens  who  think  with  anything  more 
than  their  eyes. 


The  New  Age  17 

Social  efficiency  must  come  from  within  com- 
munities and  not  from  without.  Salvation  by 
imported  talk  is  as  futile  in  civics  as  in  religion ; 
in  all  its  forms  it  is  to  be  worked  out  by  united 
local  effort.  Social  prosperity  cannot  come  from 
Congress  nor  from  the  Legislature:  it  is  wholly 
a  local  product  of  cooperation.  The  rock  foun- 
dation of  community  welfare  is  laid  only  when 
the  folk  of  any  locality  learn  to  treat  each  other, 
first  and  last,  as  human  persons  without  distinc- 
tions of  wealth,  religion,  politics,  or  any  other 
classification  based  upon  abstract  nouns.  The 
world  of  individuals  will  be  a  social  world  only 
when  the  human  needs  and  necessities  of  indi- 
vidual human  beings  are  held  steadily  in  the 
foreground  of  emotions  and  reflections  and  con- 
duct. Not  otherwise  will  the  nationalisms  and 
national  moralities  which  have  drenched  the 
world  with  blood  give  place  to  the  international- 
ism and  international  moralities  which  rest  upon 
universal  human  needs. 

Americans  throughout  the  length  and  breadth 
of  the  land  are  good-hearted  and  kindly-inten- 
tioned  folk.  Many  of  them  are  liars  but  largely 
because  they  were  compelled  to  learn  to  lie  by 
misguided  parents  and  other  teachers.  Many  of 
them  are  unreliable  and  unscrupulous  mainly 
because  they  have  been  taught  by  example  that 
if  one  only  got  enough  while  getting  goods  of 
any  sort,  most  people  would  piously  forget  to 


18      Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

ask  how  the  getting  was  done.  Some  are  gen- 
erously stingly  for  they  were  trained  to  act  as  if 
a  dead  sea  were  better  than  a  fountain — and 
never  learned  to  the  contrary  till  they  had  lost 
their  sight  and  were  too  old  to  develop  the  inter- 
nal machinery  of  giving  heartily.  Most  of  them 
are  more  or  less  timidly  ambitious,  eager  to  play 
the  game  and  not  be  rated  as  failures.  Not  many 
are  "commercial"  in  the  sense  in  which  that  term 
is  often  used,  greedy  for  gain,  sunk  in  sordid 
grasping  for  the  power  of  gold.  Communities 
are  made  up  of  just  this  sort  of  human  stuff, 
good  and  bad  but  more  good  than  bad — mixed, 
in  short.  The  "social-responsibility-efficiency- 
and-betterment"  idea  must  find  lodgment  in  the 
thoughts  and  emotions  of  a  good  nucleus  of 
plain,  neighborly  citizens  in  each  community. 
The  quickened  consciences  of  a  few  must  touch 
others  till  the  dough  is  ready  for  the  oven.  And 
enlightened  consciences  quickly  discover  that 
the  power  of  the  present  and  the  hope  of  the 
future  lies  not  in  the  well-shaped  or  misshaped 
citizens  who  are  rapidly  going  off  this  scene  of 
action,  but,  emphatically,  does  the  hope  of  hu- 
manity rest  upon  the  yet  unformed  and  unshaped 
citizens  upon  whom  this  generation  is  rolling 
the  biggest  load  ever  put  upon  human  shoulders. 
The  one  outstanding  community  institution  in 
America  is  the  public  school.  Fortunately  this 
is  now  wide  open  to  the  introduction  of  "all 


The  New  Age  19 

germs  of  pure  and  world-wide  purposes."  Com- 
munities are  often  more  interested  in  the  com- 
munity's children  than  are  the  physical  parents 
of  many  of  the  same  little  ones.  Real  Americans 
almost  never  protest  against  school  taxes.  Citi- 
zens respond  generously  to  concrete  needs  of 
children  for  food,  clothing,  dental  and  medical 
care.  Schools  are  not,  as  is  sometimes  igno- 
rantly  charged,  claiming  a  larger  and  larger  share 
of  parental  oversight  and  care  of  children;  on 
the  contrary,  this  is  increasingly  thrust  upon  the 
schools  by  unloving  animal  parents  of  children, 
as  every  superintendent  of  schools  and  school- 
teacher knows.  But  because  of  the  sweeping 
changes,  as  will  be  noted  later,  the  per  capita 
cost  of  education,  facilities,  and  equipment  is 
making  heavy  increases  until  about  three  quar- 
ters of  a  billion  dollars  annually  are  now  spent 
on  public  education,  and  this  item  is  usually  paid 
more  cheerfully  than  any  other  part  of  the  public 
budget  of  expense.  Child  welfare  makes  a  strong 
appeal  to  taxpayers  even  though  overworked  and 
shamelessly  underpaid  teachers  often  find  it  diffi- 
cult to  believe  it  true.  Parents  to  the  number 
of  hundreds  assemble,  sometimes  at  unseason- 
able hours,  to  confer  on  the  plain  facts  of  phys- 
ical and  moral  parenthood  with  relation  to  social 
welfare  and  community  efficiency.  Out  of  such 
conferences  often  come  the  quickened  conscience 
and  deeper  determination  to  put  through,  during 

(3) 


20       Essentials  of  C ommunity  Efficiency 

a  period  of  years,  a  program  of  human  better- 
ments and  community  improvements.  Such  pro- 
grams, rooted  in  parental  instincts,  are  most 
likely  to  find  sure  and  abiding  anchorage,  for 
these  instincts  must,  finally,  be  relied  on  to  per- 
petuate the  race  and  to  keep  the  race  fit  to  be 
perpetuated. 

Those  who  are  interested  in  developing  a  true 
sense  of  social  responsibility  in  the  citizens  of 
America  find  here  their  chief  help  and  point  of 
contact  with  all  live  community  interests.  From 
a  basis  in  parenthood  all  practical  phases  of 
social  efficiency  can  be  discussed  in  terms  of 
daily  life  and  friendly  association.  The  precise 
jargon  of  the  social  sciences  may  be  unintelligi- 
ble to  many  citizens  but  all  understand  clearly 
enough  what  it  means  to  be  neighborly  with 
those  who  live  round  about,  to  treat  each  other 
without  regard  to  sectional  and  sectarian  differ- 
ences, to  come  together  frequently  in  a  play 
festival  with  everybody  in  it,  and  to  organize 
their  local  neighborliness  so  as  to  look  out  for 
the  all-round  welfare  of  all  the  babies,  girls, 
boys,  young  women,  young  men,  and  grown  folk 
of  the  locality.  Once  the  gist  of  the  real  work 
of  social  responsibility  is  well  lodged  in  the  sym- 
pathies of  American  citizens,  they  have  wit 
enough,  sense  and  stability  enough,  and  grit 
enough  to  work  at,  work  out,  and  work  clear 


The  New  Age  21 

through  most  gratifying  results  in  the  way  of 
social  reform  and  welfare. 

Preparedness,  at  this  writing,  is  on  parade: 
hundreds  of  thousands  parading  and  millions  ap- 
plauding. It  is  like  ancient  Rome  brought  to  life. 
The  military  unpreparedness  of  China  and  Amer- 
ica is  much  cartooned  and  caricatured.  Perhaps 
we  are  foolishly  helpless.  Those  who  know  any- 
thing, as  they  ought  to  know  it,  know  assuredly 
that  America's  peril  lies  not  on  the  coasts  and 
outer  boundaries  but  in  the  homes;  that  the 
source  of  chief  danger  is  not  in  Europe,  nor  yet 
in  Asia,  but  inside  American  minds.  Our  lack 
is  not  so  much  of  ships  and  skilled  shooters  but 
of  unselfish  citizens,  not  of  professional  blood- 
letters  but  of  honest  neighbors.  Moral  ideals, 
dominant  and  driving  motives  to  help  the  other 
fellow  get  on  his  feet  and  be  a  helper,  these  are 
the  things  we  lack,  because  we  were  never  taught 
them  aright.  Most  citizens  of  middle  age  were 
never  fashioned  in  that  social  consciousness 
which  sees  the  equal  worth  and  fundamental 
likeness  of  human  beings  when  they  are  stripped 
to  their  naked  selves  and  separated  from  their 
decorations  and  abstractions.  Neither  were  they 
guided  into  that  social  conscience  which  locates 
responsibility  on  him  who  knows  and  is  able  to 
act  helpfully;  which  covers  with  the  stigma  of 
social  indecency  whoever  claims  the  flag  to  hide 
his  vulgar  selfishness.  The  big  problem  is  not  the 


22      Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

preservation  of  a  nation  of  citizens  with  plenty 
of  money  in  every  pocket,  but  rather  the  creation 
of  a  nation  of  folk  who  believe  in  themselves  and 
in  mankind,  and  who  will  fight  to  the  death  to 
give  human  beings  anywhere  a  square  deal  in 
the  chance  of  finding  life  and  happiness.  This 
problem  is  not  to  be  solved  by  multiplying  dress 
performances:  it  is  the  simple  problem  of  com- 
munity life,  of  creating  the  sentiment  that  noth- 
ing less  than  the  best  is  good  enough  for  anyone 
in  our  locality,  of  a  practical  patriotism  which 
finds  expression  in  neighborliness  with  the  folk 
closest  to  us.  The  problem  is  a  community 
problem:  the  solution  of  the  problem  must  be 
where  the  problem  is. 

The  level  of  community  sentiment  can  be  lifted 
by  well-planned  effort  just  as  it  is  lowered  by 
effortless  neglect.  What  social  sentiment  is 
already  in  the  community  can  be  enlightened 
and  invigorated.  New  sentiment  can  be  called 
into  life.  The  whole  vague  and  ill-defined  senti- 
ment can  be  drawn  to  a  focus  and  crystallized 
on  concrete  plans  and  systematic  cooperation  set 
in  motion.  It  cannot  be  done  by  occasional 
speeches  and  fine  essays.  It  will  not  come  by 
accident  nor  steal  in  while  men  sleep.  It  must 
have  first  place  in  the  attention  of  the  community 
for  a  definite  period  of  time.  It  must  grow  up 
out  of  the  mind  of  the  community,  and  not  be 
as  something  manufactured  elsewhere  and  im- 


The  New  Age  23 

ported  as  a  new  toy.  Even  the  framework  of 
cooperation  must  be  made  on  the  ground,  a  flex- 
ible expression  of  the  spirit  of  good-will  among 
local  citizens.  "Freedom  only  comes  by  grace  of 
God,  and  that  which  comes  not  by  his  grace  must 
fall."  Whatever  is  artificial,  forced,  will  crumble 
by  its  own  deadness.  Helps  and  hindrances  will 
be  recognized,  helps  used,  hindrances  accepted 
as  challenges,  shortcomings  discounted,  com- 
munity vision  clarified,  and  conscience  sensitized, 
till  those  who  actually  are  the  community  stand 
up  in  new  self-consciousness.  This  is  not  proph- 
ecy but  history.  It  has  been  done  and  is  being 
done.  Communities  once  dead  are  become  alive, 
and  their  new  life  heralded  far  and  wide.  It  only 
waits  for  all  the  communities  of  the  English- 
speaking  nations  to  catch  the  contagion  of  social 
responsibility  and  to  set  sanely  about  the  task 
of  betterment  and  efficiency  in  order  that  "the 
new  age  in  the  life  of  the  world"  may  bring  in 
a  more  brotherly  humanity. 


CHAPTER    n 

Ideas  and  Institutions 

Old  Guards  and  Progressives  appear  in  all 
generations,  in  politics  and  religion,  in  business 
affairs,  and  in  social  life.  Prophets  and  priests 
were  pitted  against  each  other  in  the  ancient 
Hebrew  church-state.  Philosophers  and  ecclesi- 
astics waged  their  struggles  during  the  middle 
ages,  and  their  fight  which  forced  the  Renais- 
sance laid  the  foundation  of  the  modern  world  in 
a  revival  of  learning.  Modern  insurgents  and 
standpatters  merely  represent  the  endless  warfare 
in  the  world  of  ideas  between  those  who  face  the 
past  with  fidelity  and  those  who,  looking  for- 
ward, set  a  higher  value  on  children  than  on 
grandparents,  who  exalt  the  living  rather  than  the 
dead,  who  believe  in  playgrounds  more  than  in 
cemeteries. 

Farmers  have  more  at  stake  than  have  phi- 
losophers in  persuading  people  to  live  for  Ideas 
more  than  for  Institutions.  Hereditary  loafers, 
men  and  women  taught  from  earliest  infancy  that 
they  were  created  with  special  rights  to  the 
fruitage  of  the  lives  and  deaths  of  other  human 
beings  who  were  created  with  special  duties  to 
toil  and  die  unquestioningly,  ruling  classes  of  the 

24 


Ideas  and  Institutions  25 

Hohenzollern  and  Hapsburg  type,  always  have 
been  and  always  will  be  ruthless  and  brutal  and 
inhuman  in  business  and  in  politics.  The  whole 
spirit  of  western  democracy  is  dead  set  to  incul- 
cate ideas,  to  teach  all  children  the  worth  of  per- 
sons and  personal  rights,  to  make  business  and 
politics  as  well  as  education  wide  open  with 
equal  opportunities  for  all.  The  rights  of  all 
persons  over  against  the  privileges  of  a  few  per- 
sons are  by  no  means  yet  conceded,  but  the  issue 
is  more  and  more  sharply  drawn  with  clear  out- 
lines, in  the  light  of  current  happenings  in 
Mexico,  Europe  and  Asia. 

Each  new  generation  of  babies  starts  in  total 
ignorance  of  both  rights  and  duties.  Infants, 
most  of  them,  are  brutally  punished  into  a  recog- 
nition of  their  duties  toward  adults,  cowed  into 
submission  to  all  the  whims  of  parents,  and  they 
absorb  unconsciously  a  sense  of  the  real  or  fan- 
cied rights  of  the  class  of  human  beings  the 
parents  represent.  All  the  artificial  distinctions 
and  abstract  relations  which  grown  folk  have 
made  for  themselves  are  forced  into  the  child 
world  to  the  complete  destruction  of  its  native 
human  democracy,  "Sheltered  Daughters"  and 
"Oppressed  Sons"  are  in  this  way  whipped  into 
conformity  with  institutions  and  conceptions 
which  lie  entirely  outside  all  strictly  human  reali- 
ties and  relations.  A  contrast  between  reports 
of  a  battle,  such  a  report  as  might  come  any 


26      Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

day  from  the  three  thousand  mile  battle  front, 
will  show  the  difference  between  the  world  of 
abstract  institutions  and  that  of  human  realities 
and  concrete  ideas: 

REPORT  OF  A  BATTLE 

As  couched  in  impersonal  abstractions: 

We  repulsed  an  enemy  charge  in  force  yesterday. 
Our  reserves  swept  all  before  them.  The  enemy 
fought  bravely  but  could  not  withstand  our  superior 
numbers.  They  left  many  on  the  field  besides  the 
prisoners  we  took.  New  troops  are  being  brought  up 
and  to-morrow  cnght  to  bring  us  a  memorable  vic- 
tory. God  is  gracious  to  us.  To  Him  be  all  the 
glory.  REX. 

As  told  in  human  realities: 

Yesterday  we  succeeded  in  killing  4,000  boys  and 
unmarried  men,  5,000  married  men,  of  whom  4,000 
were  the  fathers  of  9,000  children.  We  bad  killed, 
of  OUT  men,  5,000  boys  and  unmarried  men,  5,500  hus- 
bands, of  whom  4,500  were  fathers  of  10,000  children. 
For  several  hours  the  men  fought  with  bayonets  and 
knives,  stabbing,  in  all,  about  2,000  boys  and  young 
men.  We  sent  strong  young  lads  in  to  clean  out  the 
captured  trenches  and  they  shot  and  stabbed  all  who 
were  too  badly  wounded  to  escape,  then  threw  their 
bodies  up  where  our  garbage  collectors  could  get 
tbem.  Both  sides  are  burning  human  carcasses  to- 
night as  fast  as  fuel  can  be  brought  up.  Of  the 
wounded  on  both  sides  about  20,000  are  mangled  be- 
yond all  hope  of  health  and  self-support.  Nearly  4,000 
became  raving  maniacs  incurable.  We  took  6,000  men 
whom  we  can  kill,  most  of  them  at  least,  by  neglect 
in  camps.     We  are  bringing  up  thousands  more  of 


Ideas  and  Institutions  27 

beys  and  young  men  on  both  sides,  and  we  ought  to 
kill  and  mangle  frightfully  at  least  fifty  thousand  of 
these  youths  before  to-morrow  night.  We  are  add- 
ing great  numbers  of  widows  and  half-orphans  to  our 
communities  every  day.  God  is  gracious  to  us.  To 
Him  be  all  the  glory!  REX. 

How  long  could  military  wars  continue  if  their 
results  were  thus  stated  in  terms  of  bare  human 
facts?  How  long  could  the  causes  of  all  wars, 
economic  and  social  as  well  as  military,  be  har- 
bored in  human  minds  if  they  were  always  put 
forth  in  their  naked  human  realities?  Much 
preaching  and  miscellaneous  moralizing  over 
human  selfishness  are  vain  and  fruitless  simply 
for  lack  of  concreteness  and  reality.  Profuse 
professions  of  a  love  of  peace  may  be  only  a  cloak 
for  laziness  and  cowardice.  Actual  hatred  of  war 
implies  active  effort  to  plant  and  cultivate  the 
causes  of  vigorous  peace  in  the  live  bodies  of 
children  and  young  women  and  young  men. 
Peace  between  persons  is  something  vastly  more 
than  mere  absence  of  physical  conflict.  The 
bloody  nose  which  boys  sometimes  contribute  to 
a  cowardly  little  bully  is  an  invaluable  cause  of 
peace,  for  the  heart  of  all  peace  is  mutual  recog- 
nition of  a  square  deal  in  all  relations  with  chil- 
dren and  with  youthful  or  mature  women  and 
men.  If  the  present  war  compels  all  mankind  to 
put  new  emphasis  on  the  value  of  human  persons 
and  on  the  worth  of  concrete  human  relations 


28      Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

its  incalculable  cost  to  the  world  may  be  abun- 
dantly justified. 

But  this  emphasis  on  human  reality  must  be 
anchored  to  visible  and  practical  expressions  of 
humane  sentiment.  Scope  for  action  must  be 
provided.  Common  ground  must  be  found  on 
which  men  of  ideas  and  men  of  institutions  can 
unite  without  friction  and  constant  misunder- 
standing, the  one  class  of  persons  free  to  agitate 
always  for  better  conditions  of  personal  well- 
being  while  the  other  class  give  themselves  to 
preserving  and  conserving  all  the  worthy 
achievements  of  the  past. 

This  meeting  place  for  action  is  the  com- 
munity. The  institutions  of  Church  and  state 
and  home  are  now  recognized  as  existing  not  for 
themselves  as  abstractions  but  for  the  community 
of  concrete  persons  who  are  capable  of  knowing 
each  other  as  individuals  and  of  insuring  to  each 
other  the  full  measure  of  a  square  deal  in  all  their 
various  contacts  and  relations.  These  contacts 
and  relations  need  to  be  examined,  discussed, 
understood  and  used  as  they  affect  all  the  hu- 
man lives  which  make  up  the  actual  or  potential 
community.  Sentiment  must  be  created,  com- 
mon sentiment,  the  general  sense  of  the  com- 
munity must  be  reached  by  some  manner  of 
social  conversation.  Some  of  this  sentiment,  a 
very  little  of  it,  can  be  reached  and  roused  by  the 
printed  page.     Most  of  it  will  come  into  being 


Ideas  and  Institutions  29 

and  become  effective  only  as  neighbors  are  per- 
suaded to  discuss  among  themselves  new  and 
larger  phases  of  the  things  in  which  they  are 
most,  deeply  concerned.  The  human  side  of 
things  must  be  clearly  seen.  The  general  inter- 
est throughout  America  in  community  affairs 
seems  most  of  all  to  need  crystallizing  into  sim- 
ple and  definite  programs  of  betterments  and 
equally  simple  and  definite  organization  to  make 
those  programs  realized  in  community  action. 
Systematic  cooperation  must  have  a  sufficient 
blueprint  before  it  can  commence  to  build,  and 
discussion  is  the  price  which  must  be  paid  for 
clear-cut  estimates  of  the  social  situation  of  each 
community. 

An  adequate  discussion  of  community  welfare 
would  include  in  its  scope  all  the  principal  ele- 
ments of  common  life  in  American  communities. 
Some  organized  forces  closely  affect  common 
interests.  Some  unorganized  influences  work 
powerfully  for  the  shaping  of  community  senti- 
ment, ideals  and  welfare.  A  detailed  analysis  of 
these  forces  and  influences  is  outside  present 
purposes.  The  relation  of  the  most  conspicuous 
of  them  to  the  community-efficiency  idea  and  to 
underlying  human  interests  is  to  be  pointed  out. 
They  are: 

I.  The  Educational  Community:     Old  and 

New  Education;  Practical  Education; 
Practical  Citizenship;  Physical  Educa- 
tion. 


30       Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

II.  The   Child-Community:     A   New  View- 

point; Before  Babies  are  Born;  When 
Babies  are  Born;  When  Babies  are 
Weaned;  The  Community  of  Children. 

III.  The    Youth-Community:     The    Human 

Problem;  The  Solution. 

IV.  The  Parent-Community:  Courtship,  Mar- 

riage, and  Divorce ;  Physical  and  Moral 
Parenthood;  Sex  Hygiene. 

V.  The    Religious    Community:     What    is 

Religion?  Getting  Rid  of  Churches; 
Practical  Religion ;  Community 
Churches  and  Community-Centered 
Churches ;  Social  Service  and  Missions ; 
Religious  Education. 

VI.  The  Commercial  Community:  Principles 

of  Retail  Trade;  Local  Commercial 
Conditions ;  Cooperation  for  Profit  and 
for  Community  Betterment. 

VII.  The   Industrial   Community:     Principles 

of  Industrial  Efficiency;  Local  Indus- 
trial Conditions;  Cooperation  for  Com- 
munity Efficiency. 

VIII.  The  Agricultural  Community:     Primary 

and  Secondary  Programs;  Retired 
Farmer-Citizens ;  Absentee-Landlords 
and  Tenants;  Social  Cooperation  be- 
tween Town  and  Country. 

IX.  The     Social     Community:      Community 

House  Centers. 

X.  •       The  Political  Community:     Government 

by  Neighbors;  New  Conditions  in 
Politics. 

Each  one  of  these  group  interests  has  much  to 
do  with  all  the  others,  and  with  the  less  promi- 


Ideas  and  Institutions  31 

nent  forces  which,  taken  together  in  all  their  re- 
lations to  human  well-being,  go  to  make  up  the 
community.  By  examining  each  group  interest 
apart,  but  with  knowledge  that  it  is  never  a  thing 
apart  and  unrelated  to  all  active  interests,  it  be- 
comes plainer  why  the  community  is  now  re- 
garded as  the  center  of  civilization,  the  true 
object  of  effort  in  setting  in  motion  the  forces  of 
efficiency  and  betterment.  Social  responsibility 
resting  upon  immediate  personal  interests  is 
founded  on  the  only  basis  which  is  as  changeless 
as  the  nature  of  our  race. 


CHAPTER  in 

The  Educational  Community 

Old  Education  and  the  Nevr 

When  father  and  mother  went  to  school  there 
was  no  question  as  to  what  education  was  and 
how  it  was  obtained.  "Get  your  lessons.  Get 
promoted.  If  you  get  whipped  you'll  get  another 
one  at  home."  Some  assorted  admonitions  were 
added  to  fit  sex,  age,  and  known  characteristics. 
All  nature  might  be  calling  loudly  outside,  but 
inside  the  schoolhouse  it  was:  "Repeat  the  table 
of  Troy  weight.  Spell  gnosiology.  Repeat  the 
list  of  prepositions.  Give  the  eighteen  rules  of 
construction.  Bound  Mexico,  and  tell  what  they 
raise  there,  and  how  often.  Quit  whispering. 
Stop  pulling  that  girl's  hair."  Such  was  the  an- 
cient process  of  making  bricks  of  human  clay. 

Education  was  acquired  through  the  eyes,  car- 
ried in  memory  until  examinations,  then  cheer- 
fully forgotten.  Children  would  be  shocked,  now 
as  then,  if  grown  folk  told  the  truth,  told  how 
little  they  remembered,  and  were  glad  of  it,  or 
how  much  of  it  they  would  gladly  forget  if  they 
could  in  other  ways  get  a  teacher's  certificate. 
Grown  folk  know  that  what  one  can  remember 
is  of  slight  account:  what  one  cannot  forget  is 

32 


The  Educational  Community  33 

live  material.  The  old  education  was  not  life, 
only  preparation  for  it,  a  filling  up  on  dry  facts 
which  touched  real  life  not  at  all.  No  one  seemed 
to  think  it  was  the  only  life  school  children  had. 
Life  begun  only  when  the  president  of  the  school 
board  handed  over  a  diploma  and  some  wise  ora- 
tor told  youngsters  they  could  now  "commence." 
The  theory  was  that  all  the  children  would  be 
magically  transformed  by  what  they  memorized, 
and  that  all  of  them  except  the  hopeless  incor- 
rigibles  would  love  their  teachers  dearly,  load 
their  memories  properly,  be  nice,  and  live  hap- 
pily ever  afterward.  Some  still  revel  in  that  ed- 
ucational moonshine.  "Mind  in  the  Making,"  at 
least  the  first  chapter,  and  "Youth  and  the  Race," 
both  by  Professor  E.  J.  Swift,  are  excellent  tonic 
for  this  malady.  The  hopeless  incorrigibles  most 
often  proved  to  be  the  most  virile  citizens  ever 
produced  in  that  locality.  The  most  energetic 
young  minds  dropped  out  of  school  or,  if  they 
stood  the  grind  until  graduation,  it  was  sure  to 
be  by  the  frequent  attacks  of  blindness  by  teach- 
ers whose  human  sense  was  stronger  than  their 
slavery  to  the  school  system.  The  really  good 
children,  those  who  finished  with  high  honors  for 
memory  and  deportment,  those  who  succumbed, 
had  most  of  their  lively  desires  crushed  out,  and 
were  permanently  incapable  of  being  enthusias- 
tically bad  or  good.  Parents,  school  teachers — 
every  one  seemed  to  take  a  special  delight  in 


34       Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

repressing  originality  and  in  impressing  conven- 
tionality. Youthful  insurgents  stood  no  chance 
except  to  become  outlaws,  strike  out  for  them- 
selves, and  meet  the  world's  challenge  by  the 
force  of  youth's  splendid  egotism.  Those  who 
stayed,  the  real  products  of  the  old  education, 
were  cut  to  one  pattern,  talked  alike,  had  the 
same  handwriting,  duplicated  each  other  even  in 
permanent  mediocrity. 

The  old  education  feared  contact  with  realities. 
Three  angry  farmers  protested  in  unison  against 
the  school  children  ransacking  the  whole  vicinity 
for  all  sorts  of  measures  from  teaspoons  to  grain 
sacks.  They  snarled  their  contempt  for  the  small 
bin  of  oats  used  in  the  schoolhouse  for  all  kinds 
of  mathematical  purposes,  and  vowed  they 
wouldn't  stand  for  teacher  and  scholars  wasting 
so  much  time  staking  out  foundations  and  mak- 
ing all  the  building  specifications  for  a  needed 
addition  to  the  building — they  "paid  taxes  to  have 
their  children  learnt,  and  if  the  teacher  couldn't 
learn  'em  they'd  get  one  who  could."  They  were 
perfect  products  of  the  old  education.  The  old 
education  went  directly  to  symbols,  realities  be- 
longed to  life  after  commencement.  Nearly  the 
whole  of  the  old  education  was  memorizing  and 
glib  repetition  of  symbols,  letters  and  figures, 
words  and  numbers,  grammar  and  arithmetic, 
rhetoric  and  algebra,  logic  and  geometry,  litera- 
ture   and    mathematics.    Eye-minded     children 


The  Educational  Community  35 

could  "pass"  with  little  effort;  ear-minded  or 
touch-minded  children  got  along  only  by  the 
goodness  of  teachers  who  would  lie  academically 
rather  than  be  humanly  cruel  and  conform 
strictly  to  the  rules  of  the  system.  Many  chil- 
dren suffered  tortures,  even  to  the  permanent  un- 
dermining of  their  health,  in  sincere  efforts  to 
whip  themselves  to  do  the  impossible,  and  so 
retain  the  favor  of  teachers  and  parents.  Natural 
processes  for  unfoldment  of  physical  and  mental 
powers  had  nothing  to  do  with  framing  the  con- 
tent of  studies  or  means  of  making  those  contents 
alive.  Bookishness,  erudition,  wide  command  of 
symbols — this  was  education  even  if  the  educated 
person  had  to  forget  pretty  much  all  of  it  in  order 
to  make  a  living  at  anything  except  dealing  in 
symbols.  Professor  Brander  Matthews  speaks 
the  mind  of  multitudes  when,  in  conversation,  he 
declared  that  the  first  twenty  years  of  his  educa- 
tion were  worse  than  wasted;  that  when  he  left 
school  and  came  to  grips  with  realities  he  found 
that  he  had  been  merely  playing  with  the  names 
of  things;  that  the  mental  images  he  had  made 
to  go  with  the  memorized  names  corresponded 
not  at  all  with  the  real  things ;  and  that  much  of 
what  he  had  learned  had  to  be  unlearned,  being 
untrue  to  realities.  So  much  of  the  old  education 
in  schools  and  colleges  did  this  very  thing  for 
youthful  minds — kept  them  pointed  away  from 
actualities,  away  from  wide  contact  with  reali- 

(4) 


36       Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

ties;  kept  them  immersed  in  the  symbols  of  lit- 
erature and  the  classics  and  mathematics;  a  life 
so  withdrawn  that  even  college  love  affairs  swam 
in  a  haze  of  romanticism  and  ethereal  unreality — 
not  a  thousandth  part  as  human  and  real  and 
true  as  the  love-making  of  the  country  lad  who 
gets  his  girl  in  a  buggy  and  attends  strictly  to 
business.  The  unrealism  of  the  old  education 
became  most  fully  apparent  when  its  tasks  were 
finally  left  behind,  and  young  people  dropped 
from  the  clouds  at  the  marriage  altar,  began  to 
hustle  for  a  living,  and  gripped  the  real  job  of 
rearing  babies  into  boys  and  girls,  children  into 
young  men  and  young  women,  and  young  folk 
mto  parents. 

ONE  STREAM  OF  REALITY,  AND  ONLY 
ONE,  FLOWS  CEASELESSLY  THROUGH 
TIME  ON  THIS  PLANET— THE  STREAM 
OF  INFANT  LIFE  BECOMING  CHILD- 
HOOD, OF  CHILD  LIFE  BECOMING 
YOUTH,  AND  OF  YOUNG  HUMAN  LIFE 
BECOMING  PARENTHOOD. 

Too  long — and  with  frightfully  bitter  results — 
have  the  ideals  of  mankind  been  fixed  on  "a  place 
in  the  sun"  of  some  far-off  achievement  in  the 
world  of  adults,  some  lure  of  unreality  cloaked 
in  lofty  symbols,  some  dancing  ignis  fatuus 
beckoning  all  humanity,  like  a  true  corpse-candle 
to  a  dance  of  death.    Men  lay  down  their  lives  by 


The  Educational  Community  2i7 

millions  for  ideals  which  can  have  no  place  in 
human  realities.  The  pity  of  it  all !  Whole  gen- 
erations finding  no  realities  from  the  time  they 
leave  mid-youth  till  driven  headlong  or  wearily 
at  last  into  the  unescapable  reality,  no-life!  By 
the  time  young  folk  reach  middle  adolescence, 
in  the  early  twenties,  their  real  future  does  not 
at  all  lie  ahead  of  them,  but  is  actually  behind 
them — in  the  world  of  young  lives,  in  other's 
babies  and  their  own,  who  shall  take  up  life  as 
it  is  rolled  down  upon  them  by  the  whole  com- 
munity, and  carry  it — whether  upward  or  down- 
ward, forward  or  backward,  toward  refined  hu- 
man society  or  brute  savagery,  all  depends  on 
what  is  done  with  them  before  they  are  seventeen 
years  of  age,  and  loosed  to  do  what  they  will  with 
themselves.  This  world  of  unrealities  will  in- 
evitably go  on  till  the  ideals  of  the  old  education 
are  abandoned  and  human  reality,  the  normal 
needs  and  processes  of  human  beings  unfolding, 
is  put  in  its  place.  /  The  old  education  was  built 
I  by  adults  to  fit  miniature  adults  for  mythical 
adulthood.  The  new  education  aims  to  fit  babies 
for  fine  babyhood,  to  fit  boys  and  girls  for  full 
and  buoyant  childhood,  to  fit  youths  for  intelli- 
gent parenthood  and  effective  citizenship,  and  to 
fit  mankind  for  a  decent,  truth-telling,  square- 
dealing  treatment  of  flesh-and-blood  folk  of  all 
races  and  colors  and  kinds.  The  present  world 
full  of  lies,  execrations,  murders,  blood-dripping 


38       Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

profits,  national  moralities  based  upon  cool  and 
calculating  and  sinister  and  scientific  lying,  and 
the  national  selfishness  which  derides  a  "presi- 
dent of  humanity,"  the  world  as  it  is  now  in 
Europe  and  Asia  and  America  and  Australia  and 
Africa,  is  the  legitimate  and  inevitable  outcome 
— and  it  will  continue  till  end  of  time  to  be  the 
outcome — of  education  which  ignores  the  human 
realities  which  constitute  mankind  in  the  mak- 
ing. If  any  lover  of  traditions  feels  impelled  to 
make  a  plea  for  traditional  education,  let  him 
back  up  against  the  war  and  disorganized  Amer- 
ica and  plead  for  these  things  to  be  treasured  as 
the  best  humanity  can  do  with  itself.  In  so  far 
as  civilization  can  properly  be  said  to  have  col- 
lapsed, it  is  the  old  education  which  has  fallen 
into  infinite  disrepute — an  education  which 
looked  upon  babies  and  children  and  youths  as 
only  so  much  human  fodder  for  adult  purposes 
and  comforts  and  conveniences.  Over  against 
the  wreckage  of  man's  works  is  a  growing  des- 
perate earnestness,  fired  by  sympathies  not  yet 
petrified,  and  human  affections  not  yet  atrophied, 
to  turn  the  whole  world  end  for  end,  and  to  put 
all  the  power  of  organized  religion  and  education 
and  statecraft  behind  the  natural  processes  of 
culture  and  social  efficiency  of  young  human 
beings. 

School,  to  most  Americans,  has  been  an  abv 
stract  symbol  of  the  embodied  wisdom  of  the 


The  Educational  Community  39 

ages.  Parents  have  blissfully  sent  their  offspring 
"to  school,"  in  trustful  confidence  that  everything 
essential  for  their  complete  preparation  would 
be  provided  by  a  super-parental  wisdom  and  fore- 
sight. School,  in  the  concrete,  has  mostly  been 
a  crowd  of  squirming  lads  and  lasses,  anchored 
to  desks  which  ought  to  be  in  museums  as  relics 
of  the  age  of  the  Inquisition,  confronting  more  or 
less  books  full  of  fewer  or  more  symbols  of  reali- 
ties which  the  youngsters  have  never  faced  and 
most  of  them  never  will,  compelled  to  memorize 
in  solitude  and  unsocial  torture  a  lot  of  stuff  that 
has  no  relation  to  the  world  of  reality  which  now 
is  or  will  be  or  ever  was ;  and  directed  by  a  young 
woman  who  has  achieved  bookishness  enough  to 
get  a  license  to  teach  courses  of  study  designed 
by  men,  most  of  whom  do  not  know,  never  did 
know,  and  never  will  know  what  a  real  child  is 
biologically,  physiologically,  or  any  other  "log- 
ically" outside  of  the  deductive  logic  of  adults 
based  on  assumptions  contrary  to  fact.  If  this 
seems  like  a  caricature,  let  any  middle-aged  citi- 
zen dig  honestly  in  his  own  memory  or  go  over 
to  the  schoolhouses  of  the  old  type  and  watch 
the  school  processes  at  work — watch  the  differ- 
ence between  the  children  on  the  playground, 
alert,  thrilling  with  life  and  energy,  whipping 
each  other  into  practical  morals  and  workable 
social  standards,  and  those  same  youngsters  "in 


40       Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

school**  with  their  drilled  stupidity  and  artificial 
docility — getting  their  education! 

So  long  as  the  old  education  persists,  six  out 
of  seven  of  the  boys  and  girls  who  enter  the  first 
grade  escape  before  they  "pass"  from  the  eighth 
grade.  Where  the  new  education  is  in  operation 
nothing  but  accident  or  dire  necessity  can  keep 
one  of  the  youngsters  away  from  school  even 
during  the  vacation  months  when  no  compulsion 
is  upon  them.  The  old  education  regarded  boys 
and  girls  as  so  many  pairs  of  eyes  and  so  many 
intellects  to  be  stuffed  with  devitalized  facts. 
The  new  education  looks  upon  them  as  so  many 
wills  equipped  with  organs  of  sense  and  action 
to  be  trained,  guided,  and  controlled.  School- 
houses  of  the  old  style  were  bare  rooms,  desks 
and  blackboards.  Modern  schoolhouses  are 
workshops  equipped  with  the  finest  and  best  of 
tools,  implements,  musical  instruments,  motion 
picture  projectors  adapted  to  the  finest  films, 
libraries,  laboratories,  swimming  pools,  gymna- 
siums, playgrounds,  conservatories,  gardens — 
places  where  children  live,  learn  how  to  live 
splendidly  and  to  live  together  successfully,  to 
achieve  education  for  themselves  in  the  compan- 
ionship of  men  and  women  who  honor  and  revere 
the  mysteries  of  life  unfolding,  and  to  feel  the 
thrill  of  joy  inexpressible  when  they  know  they 
have  learned  to  do  thoroughly  well  some  worth 
while  things.    It  reads  almost  too  good  to  be  true. 


The  Educational  Community  41 

like  a  vision  of  the  far-flung  future.  But  fortu- 
nately for  America,  the  Gary  Plan  of  human  edu- 
cation had  become  a  concrete  reality,  simple, 
effective,  and  sane,  before  the  old  age  of  the 
world  crumbled. 

Outside  of  the  system  of  public  education  cre- 
ated by  Superintendent  Wirt  to  realize  the  educa- 
tional ideals  of  Dewey,  Draper,  and  others, 
parents  of  the  new  type  who  make  a  profession 
of  the  art  of  parenting  had  pioneered  a  new  nat- 
ural education  which  brought  the  school  into  the 
home  and  made  their  children  the  astonishment 
of  teachers  and  parents  of  the  old  school.  These 
parents  proved  that  by  using  the  spirit  of  play 
and  constructive  suggestions,  children  could 
easily  be  ready  to  enter  college  by  the  time  they 
are  fourteen  or  fifteen  years  of  age,  finish  college 
in  two  or  three  years,  and  be  fully  qualified  for 
highest  academic  honors  by  twenty  or  twenty- 
one.  One  doubting  Thomas  rushed  into  print 
with  criticisms  of  these  young  folk  and  the  sys- 
tem of  education  through  which  they  had  come: 
the  next  week  he  rushed  into  print  again  with  a 
most  abject  retraction,  and  in  this  case,  contrary 
to  the  usual  rule,  the  apology  carried  much  fur- 
ther than  the  original  offense.  These  parents 
had  simply  ignored  traditions,  treated  their  chil- 
dren naturally,  used  the  first  twelve  years  of  their 
lives  as  the  period  in  which  nature  equips  human 
beings  especially  to  gather  their  material  for  later 


42       Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

use,  languages,  nature  studies,  incidents  of  daily 
life,  sources  of  information  and  the  like,  and  they 
used  the  second  twelve-year  period  to  guide  the 
young  folk  in  choosing  and  familiarizing  them- 
selves with  the  tools  of  mechanical  and  moral 
effort.  Parenting  of  this  sort  is,  of  course,  un- 
usual; but  unusual  only  because  the  old  educa- 
tion succeeded  in  blinding  most  young  folk  before 
they  became  parents  to  the  realities  of  how  minds 
first  begin  to  learn  by  doing  and  grow  in  power 
by  doing  more  enjoyable  things  for  themselves. 
Past  mistakes  can  be  excused.  It  is  only  eight 
decades  and  less  when  first,  since  the  world  be- 
gan, men  discovered  the  actual  structure  of  the 
human  body,  and  began,  slowly,  to  comprehend 
the  significance  to  all  the  sciences  and  all  knowl- 
edge of  that  wonderful  thing,  the  most  wonderful 
object  in  the  created  universe,  the  human  infant. 
The  man  is  only  recently  dead  who  claimed  as 
his  contribution  to  modern  science  the  discovery 
of  the  social  meaning  of  the  prolonged  period  of 
human  infancy.  The  man  is  not  dead  but  still 
leading  who,  most  of  all,  discovered  and  threw 
open  for  exploration  the  uncharted  world  of  hu- 
man youth.  Less  than  half  a  century  ago  the 
study  was  first  seriously  undertaken  of  approach- 
ing the  whole  human  being  as  a  living  unitary 
organism.  Not  a  decade  has  passed  since  the 
scientific  study  of  the  human  mind  came  to  be 
known  as  the  science  of  human  behaviour,  and 


The  Educational  Community  43 

conduct,  not  deductive  logic,  became  the  starting 
point  for  all  practical  education.  The  times  of 
ignorance  may  be  winked  at,  but  the  progress  of 
knowledge  in  human  realities  appears  to  be  the 
supreme  hope  of  the  new  age  in  the  life  of  man 
on  this  planet.  If  ages  of  ignorance  can  only 
succeed  in  filling  the  world  with  wars  and  prep- 
arations for  wars ;  if  ages  of  unrealities  can  only 
flood  the  nations  with  suspicion  and  distrust  and 
make  men  spies  upon  their  closest  neighbors;  if 
blind  adulthood  can  only  clamor  for  women  to 
be  more  prolific  breeders  of  ordinary  human 
pawns  in  great  games  of  scientific  slaughter,  and 
fling  all  sex  moralities  into  the  cauldron  along 
with  most  other  social  morals;  if  such  things 
were  the  confessed  products  of  the  best  that  is 
in  man,  our  human  nature  would  stand  most 
closely  identified  with  that  of  fiends  and  furies. 
But,  on  the  contrary,  if  human  nature  has  never 
had  a  fair  chance  because  of  ignorance  and  of 
multiplied  symbols  of  unrealities,  those  who  feel 
within  themselves  the  promptings  of  nobler  pas- 
sions and  cleaner  affections,  must — unless  they 
forfeit  right  to  be  called  human — ^foster  the  new 
passion  for  direct  contact  with  realities  and  try 
if  the  kinship  of  mankind  be  true.  Education, 
then,  will  be  simply  the  guidance  of  others  in 
getting,  and  in  organizing  for  use,  and  in  using 
experiences;  treasuring  those  experiences  which 


44       Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

prove  to  work  for  well-being,  and  putting  away 
those  that  make  for  ill-will  and  unlovableness. 

GETTING  THE  MOST  FOR  SCHOOL  TAXES 

There  are  in  the  United  States  20,000,000 
school  children.  Over  twelve  million  (sixty  per 
cent)  of  these  are  attending  250,000  rural  schools. 
The  country  schoolhouse  is  the  worst,  the  most 
insanitary,  and  inadequate  type  of  building  in 
the  whole  country,  including  not  only  buildings 
for  human  beings,  but  also  those  used  for  domes- 
tic animals. 

Rural  school  children  are  less  healthy,  and  are 
handicapped  by  more  physical  defects  than  are 
the  children  of  the  cities,  including  even  the  chil- 
dren of  the  slums. 

Healthful  and  attractive  rural  schools  are  ab- 
solutely essential  to  the  physical,  mental,  social, 
economic,  and  moral  well-being  of  the  children 
themselves,  and  to  the  life  and  welfare  of  the 
nation  as  a  whole. 

Country  school  children  should  have  as  sani- 
tary and  attractive  schools,  and  as  effective  and 
intelligent  health  care  as  school  children  in  the 
cities. 

Country  children  deserve  as  much  health  and 
happiness  as  city  children. 

Country  children  are  entitled  to  as  careful  cul- 
tivation as  livestock  and  crops. 

Conformity  to  the  minimum  sanitary  require- 
ments should  be  absolutely  necessary  to  the  pride 
and  self-respect  of  the  community,  and  to  the 
sanction  and  approval  of  county,  state,  and  other 
supervising  and  interested  official  and  social 
agencies. 


The  Educational  Community  45 

Neglect  of  anything  essential  for  health  in  the 
construction,  equipment  and  care  of  the  rural 
school  plant  is  at  least  an  educational  sin  of  omis- 
sion, and  may  reasonably  be  considered  a  social 
and  civic  crime  or  misdemeanor. 

From  a  pamphlet,  Minimum  Health  Require- 
ments for  Rural  Schools,  prepared  by  Dr.  Thomas 
D.  Wood,  and  issued  in  1915  by  the  Joint  Com- 
mittee on  Health  Problems  in  Education,  of  the 
National  Education  Association  and  the  Council 
on  Health  and  Public  Instruction  of  the  Amer- 
ican Medical  Association;  525  West  120th  Street, 
New  York  City. 

County  superintendents  of  schools  made  gen- 
eral distribution  of  the  foregoing  pamphlet  dur- 
ing the  early  months  of  1916.  The  human  good- 
sense  of  America  is  being  powerfully  directed 
toward  the  country  school.  Parents  cannot 
longer  hide  the  blindness  with  which  they  have 
inflicted  upon  helpless  children  conditions  which 
tend  to  break  both  physical  and  mental  health, 
and  to  condemn  sons  and  daughters  to  make  a 
broken  path  through  life.  Plain  speech  and  sharp 
criticism  are  needed  in  other  places  as  well  as 
where  parents  perpetuate  the  one-room  district 
schoolhouse.  By  increasing  majorities  in  four 
successive  elections  taxpayers  in  an  Ohio  school 
district  voted  against  school  bonds.  The  build- 
ings used  had  been  condemned  by  local  and  state 
authorities.  Conditions  foisted  upon  school  chil- 
dren violated  the  laws  of  the  state,  of  nature, 


46       Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

and  of  common  decency.  Wealthy  taxpayers  used 
every  means  to  persuade  citizens  to  vote  against 
the  bonds  or  not  to  vote  for  them.  In  an  Illinois 
town  two  bachelor  bankers  used  fair  and  unfair 
means  to  defeat  in  like  manner  the  will  of  decent 
parents.  Such  conditions  are  everywhere.  Citi- 
zens who  would  deliberately  steal  educational 
rights  from  children  would  steal  candy  from 
babies  if  they  happened  to  like  candy.  It  would 
scarcely  be  safe  to  raise  chickens  in  a  district 
populated  by  such  citizens. 

What  are  the  six  hundred  and  more  millions 
of  school  funds  for?  To  keep  up  a  system  of 
schoolhouses  and  school  boards?  Brought  down 
out  of  the  clouds,  the  whole  gigantic  enterprise 
is  simply  providing  opportunities  for  boys  and 
girls  to  find  nurture  for  their  growth  and  exer- 
cise for  their  development.  Education  may  be 
defined  in  whatever  formidable  terms,  but  hu- 
manly speaking,  it  is  simply  showing  boys  and 
girls  how  to  live  efficiently,  how  to  live  together 
harmoniously,  and  how  to  make  the  world  of 
human  relations  honest  and  true.  Taxpayers  who 
do  not  insist  on  getting  human  results  worth  the 
investment  have  no  complaint  if  school  boards, 
superintendents,  and  the  whole  administrative 
machinery  run  true  to  traditions,  perpetuate 
precedents,  build  as  the  fathers  built,  and  turn 
out  the  same  sort  of  civilization  the  fathers  have 
made  up  to  now. 


The  Educational  Community  47 

Savage  opponents  of  public  schools  had  at  hand 
a  better  weapon  than  most  of  them  ever  thought 
to  use.  If  a  system  had  been  devised  expressly 
to  rob  each  community  of  its  best  products,  to 
drive  out  or  guide  out  of  the  community  all  who 
were  most  worth  while  of  its  lively  youths  and 
compel  them  to  invest  their  energies  somewhere 
else,  it  is  hard  to  see  how  it  could  have  been  con- 
trived more  successfully  than  by  the  school  sys^ 
tem  as  it  has  been  run.  Pupils  have  been  pointed 
to  college,  university,  the  city — anywhere  and 
everywhere  rather  than  to  the  undiscovered  and 
undeveloped  possibilities  of  the  community 
which  maintained  the  school.  The  proverbial 
bad  boys — measured  by  blind  standards — drifted 
from  indifference  to  incorrigibility  and  expulsion, 
from  school  censure  to  parental  disapproval  and 
social  ostracism  till  they  struck  out  for  them- 
selves, found  themselves,  and  began  to  amount 
to  something  among  folk  who  know  energy 
when  they  see  it,  capture  it,  and  give  it  sugges- 
tions and  a  chance.  Bright  and  docile  pupils 
were  urged  by  everyone  to  go  on  and  get 
out.  Only  those  who  could  be  whipped  into 
absolute  conformity  and  conventionality  were 
welcome  to  stay  and  fix  more  rigidly  the  forces 
of  social  petrifaction.  One  fine  high  school 
senior  pleaded  that  public  sentiment  should  re- 
quire not  expulsion,  but  extra  work  from  the  fel- 
lows who  broke  over  school  discipline  in  a  lead- 


48       Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

ing  Michigan  city.  An  Indiana  farmer  boasted 
that  his  son  was  in  the  university  preparing  for 
better  work  than  his  father  had  to  do.  Asked 
what  course  the  son  was  taking,  he  replied  with 
enthusiasm,  "I  don't  know  what  course  it  is; 
but  he  gets  $150  a  month  when  he  gets  through." 
Any  course  good  for  $5  a  day  has  been  regarded 
by  most  parents  of  the  old  type  as  the  utmost 
in  educational  attainment.  Community  life  has 
been  persistently  impoverished  until  common 
sense  began  to  move  in  the  breasts  of  taxpayers. 
They  began  to  demand  that  the  school  be  used 
primarily  to  build  up  the  home  community,  and 
that  only  those  who  were  wholly  worthless  at 
home  be  permitted  to  escape  to  the  city,  where 
they  would  find  plenty  of  congenial  company. 
This  revival  of  practical — and  profitable — good- 
sense  is  marked  in  the  agricultural  sections  of 
many  states,  Indiana  probably  being  in  the  lead. 
An  industry  whose  annual  product,  in  1915, 
amounted  to  a  sum  equal  to  $9.81  per  minute  for 
the  entire  time  from  the  birth  of  Christ  to  1916, 
is  big  enough  to  challenge  the  attention  of  any 
thinking  person.  Scientific  farming  has  devel- 
oped the  fact  that  successful  agriculture  is  the 
most  versatile,  satisfying  and  profitable  of  all  jobs 
for  those  who  can  develop  trained  brains  enough 
to  get  into  it  and  stay  with  it.  To  discover  and 
exploit  to  the  full  the  possibilities  of  the  home 
farm  and  the  home  town  is  challenging  an  in- 


The  Educational  Community  49 

creasing  number  of  trained  college  men  and 
women.  "Acres  of  diamonds"  of  varied  hues  are 
being  uncovered  in  most  unlikely  places. 

The  changed  attitude  of  demanding  first  service 
to  the  community  by  the  school  of  the  com- 
munity is  in  itself  a  powerful  factor  in  bringing 
in  the  new  education.  The  senses,  eyes  and  ears 
and  noses  of  school  children  are  being  made  sen- 
sitive to  all  that  is  best  and  all  that  is  less  than 
the  best  in  the  home  locality :  and  their  hands  and 
feet  and  tongues  are  being  made  apt  to  grapple 
what  ought  to  be  improved  and  to  grip  hard  what 
ought  to  be  wiped  out.  True  teachers  hail  this 
change  in  public  sentiment  for  two  plain  reasons : 
it  gives  an  immediate  chance  to  show  tangible 
results  for  school-funds  invested ;  and,  better  than 
all  else,  to  most  of  them,  it  points  a  way  out  of 
the  appalling  grind  of  petty  tasks  which  the  old 
order  heaped  upon  teachers.  For  the  discovery 
is  now  heralded  far  and  wide  that  children  do  not 
get  their  education  in  schoolhouses,  that  teach- 
ers are  there  only  to  help  children  get  their  edu- 
cation more  advantageously  outside  the  school, 
and  that  their  ability  to  do  many  essential  things 
thoroughly  well  and  cheerfully  is  the  final  test 
of  the  combined  good  work  of  teacher  and  pupils. 

The  community,  the  whole  community  in  all 
its  parts,  is  now  for  the  first  time  clearly  seen  as 
the  real  school  which  children  attend.  The  way 
things  are  done  in  homes,  stores,  churches,  on 


50       Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

streets  and  playgrounds,  in  alleys  and  back- 
yards— this  is  what  children  unconsciously  ab- 
sorb or  consciously  imitate.  They  merely  reflect 
in  the  school  rooms  what  they  are  learning  in  the 
big  real  school  outside.  Teachers  see  home  man- 
ners and  company  manners,  home  attitudes  and 
society  poses,  town  decency  or  general  corrup' 
tion  written  in  bold  letters  in  the  features  and 
habitual  reactions  of  the  children.  This  being 
true,  the  duty  of  the  school  to  help  to  the  utmost 
to  make  the  whole  community  all  that  it  ought 
to  be  is  clear — unless  a  waste  of  school-money  is 
to  be  covered  up  by  a  lot  of  polite  and  mislead- 
ing sophistry. 

Teachers  of  the  new  type,  for  example,  have 
discovered  that  no  eyes  are  so  sharp  as  young 
eyes  to  find  needless  dirt  and  causes  of  disease, 
open  cesspools  and  manure  heaps,  rotted  vege- 
tables back  of  stores,  meats  and  vegetables  ex- 
posed to  contamination  by  dust  and  flies,  foul 
bakeries  and  factories  of  foodstuffs,  dirty  dairies 
and  milkers,  and  all  threatened  pollution  of  the 
food,  milk,  meat,  and  water  supply  of  the  com- 
munity. More  comprehensive  and  detailed  reports 
on  civic  health  conditions  can  be  got  from  school 
children  in  one  day  than  most  health  officials 
would  be  likely  to  find  in  a  year.  The  same  pry- 
ing eyes  and  nimble  feet  and  fingers  can  find,  out 
nearly  every  case  of  defective  wiring  before  the 
fire — and  most  fire  boards  cannot  do  that.    Any 


The  Educational  Community  51 

suspected  breach  of  social  morals,  illicit  peddling 
of  intoxicants,  resorts  of  vicious  nature,  thefts 
and  the  like,  all  can  be  more  completely  run  to 
earth  and  exposed  more  mercilessly  by  a  bunch 
of  older  school-fellows  than  by  a  corps  of  trained 
detectives.  Social  order  can  be  more  effectively 
maintained  by  a  group  of  youthful  police-asso- 
ciates than  by  all  the  police  and  night  watchmen 
in  the  district,  as  Chicago  and  other  big  cities 
have  recently  discovered.  High  school  students 
can  turn  over  to  the  health  board  certified  chem- 
ical analyses — they  are  doing  it — covering  the 
whole  subsistence  of  the  community,  and  save 
large  bills  for  expert  analysts.  A  few  boys  or 
girls  sent  to  report  on  happenings  at  the  police 
court,  in  the  council  chamber,  in  the  court  room, 
at  the  public  service  plants,  or  to  ride  with  the 
firemen,  or  make  a  trip  with  the  state  dairy  in- 
spector, will  send  throughout  the  whole  school  a 
thrill  of  practical  civic  aspiration  and  interest 
infinitely  more  than  all  the  fireworks  and  flag- 
waving  and  general  hip-hurrahness  of  patriotic 
celebrations. 

Some  municipal  politicians  oppose  turning 
loose  in  the  community  such  intense  civic  zeal. 
Where  school-money  is  paid  to  keep  up  a  par- 
ticular brand  of  politicians,  taxpayers  have  noth- 
ing else  to  say. 

Communities  have  been  moved  often  by  'civic 
pride  to  build  fine  school  plants,  turn  them  over 

(5) 


52       Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

to  school  boards,  and  then  be  denied  by  those 
boards  the  privilege  of  using  the  property  which 
they  paid  for  for  civic  and  social  purposes.  This 
exhibition  of  monumental  stupidity  is  only  an- 
other evidence  of  the  power  of  the  old  education 
to  produce  sheeplike  docility  in  whatever  citizens 
did  not  escape  from  the  town.  Adjectives  nor 
adverbs  can  fitly  characterize  it.  If  groups  of 
citizens  want  to  build  partisan  meetinghouses, 
tie  up  thousands  of  dollars  of  fixed  capital  and 
let  it  stand  idle  more  than  nineteen  twentieths  of 
the  time — why  that  is  one  of  the  prized  priv- 
ileges of  religious  liberty  in  America.  But  to 
shut  schoolhouses  against  any  use  which  all  citi- 
zens may  want  to  make  of  them  is  directly  con- 
trary to  public  policy  and  good-sense.  This  new 
need,  newly  discovered  need,  adds  another  urgent 
reason  for  emptying  every  schoolroom  in  Amer- 
ica of  rigid,  immovable  and  unadjustable  desk 
seats  and  to  install  in  their  place  movable  desk 
chairs  which  can  be  put  out  of  the  way  and  leave 
the  rooms  clear  for  any  sort  of  public  use.  Re- 
vival of  the  social  spirit  in  communities  is  making 
a  wider  use  of  school  plants  indispensable.  Tax- 
payers should  insist  upon  electing  school  boards 
who  have  community  sense  as  well  as  the  ability 
to  get  teachers  to  work  for  $5  a  month  less 
salary.  School  property  idle  except  for  thirty 
or  thirty-six  hours  weekly  is  a  clear  waste  of  tax- 
payer's money.     The  community's  schoolhouse 


The  Educational  Community  53 

ought  to  be  fit  for  use  and  open  for  use  twelve 
to  fourteen  hours  a  day  for  twelve  months  in  the 
year. 

Demands  for  more  efficient  and  economical  use 
of  taxpayers'  investment  in  schools  couples  up 
perfectly  with  the  new  education. 

The  superintendent  of  a  centralized  township 
school  had  the  equipment  of  a  blacksmith  shop, 
harness  shop,  and  shoe  shop  housed  in  the  school- 
yard. Boys  and  girls,  with  a  little  guidance, 
quickly  became  expert  in  making  such  iron  and 
leather  repairs  as  are  always  needed  on  farms. 
Girls  brought  sewing  and  household  stuff,  boys 
brought  or  bought  carpenter,  plumbing,  tinning, 
and  garage  tools.  Without  fuss,  almost  without 
notice,  within  a  year  the  schoolhouse  became  pre- 
cisely what  the  superintendent  knew  it  ought  to 
be,  a  veritable  workshop  of  practical  education, 
where  youngsters  not  only  learned  how  to  do 
practical  work,  but  where  also  the  lessons  from 
books  became  alive  by  contact  with  the  duties  of 
daily  life.  No  citizen  of  that  district  now  chuckles 
at  jibes  about  children  coming  out  of  school  with 
a  lot  of  book-learning  and  no  sense.  They  know 
better.  Their  children  are  having  all  their  senses 
made  active  and  acute  and  their  organs  of  action 
brought  under  motived  control.  That  part  of 
education  is  splendidly  taken  care  of.  One  large 
part  has  yet  to  be  done. 


54       Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

Physical  education  has  been  taken  up  and  pro- 
moted energetically  by  the  State  Teachers'  As- 
sociation of  Michigan,  as  elsewhere.  A  woman's 
club  accumulated  $500  which  they  wisely  in- 
vested in  playground  equipment,  set  it  up,  and 
unwisely  told  the  children  of  the  city  to  go  to  it. 
They  did.  Presently  the  equipment  was  splinters 
and  ribbons.  The  women  are  convinced  that  if 
the  doctrines  of  hereditary  depravity  and  infant 
damnation  are  not  true  they  ought  to  be.  Many 
tears  and  much  feminine  profanity  flowed  freely. 
Fathers  held  their  peace,  mostly,  and  kept  on 
working.    The  case  is  typical. 

Destructiveness  is  one  of  a  child's  most  valua- 
ble assets.  It  is  the  immature  power  of  analysis, 
of  investigation  and  discovery  working  without 
guidance.  Given  no  supervision  and  "Helen's 
Babies"  will  keep  on  till  the  end  of  time  wanting 
"to  shee  a  wheels  go  wound."  Turned  to  con- 
structive ends  the  same  impulses  find  expression 
in  new  experiences  and  new  social  combinations. 
Physical  education  has  more  to  do  with  health, 
mental  alertness,  poise  and.  self-possession  than 
any  other  phase  of  culture.  Older  persons  need 
it  scarcely  less  than  do  children  and  youths.  But 
chastened  self-control  makes  adults  more  inde- 
pendent of  supervision  and  direction  than  young 
folk  can  possibly  be.  A  municipal  director  of 
physical  education,  giving  part  of  his  time  to 
youths  out  of  school  and  to  parents,  is  one  of  the 


The  Educational  Community  55 

indispensable  public  servants  in  this  new  age. 
This  is,  furthermore,  one  of  the  big  wedges  being 
driven  into  the  old  field  of  education  to  let  in  new 
ideas  and  let  out  new  energies. 

Play,  organized  and  supervised  play,  has  come 
to  be  recognized  as  one  of  the  chief  of  all  educa- 
tional processes — not  "interfered"  play  in  which 
grown-ups  are  forever  mixing  in  and  stopping 
the  natural  processes  of  child  play.  Group  plays 
are  the  main  agency  for  making  a  society  out  of 
individuals,  of  planting  the  basis  of  morals  deep 
in  the  live  tissues  of  youthful  human  beings,  and 
of  cultivating  that  keenest  of  all  weapons  of  cor- 
rection, conscience.  The  sway  of  the  spirit  of 
play,  judiciously  guided  by  older  minds,  is  the 
surest  of  all  ways  to  develop  that  much-sought 
and  universally  desirable  thing,  leadership.  Gen- 
erous provision  for  supervised  playgrounds  has 
more  to  do  with  community  welfare  now  and 
with  determining  the  quality  of  community  wel- 
fare in  the  future  than  has  any  other  one  use  of 
school-funds. 

But  practical  education  and  larger  community 
use  of  school  energies  are  finding  another  field 
of  expression  which  has  already  been  suggested. 
The  whole  rural  school  population  of  states  like 
Indiana  will  soon  be  cared  for  exclusively  in  con- 
solidated or  centralized  schools.  More  than 
forty  per  cent  of  the  rural  school  children  of  In- 
diana are  already  so  cared  for.    Teachers  of  do- 


56       Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

mestic  science  and  of  agriculture,  hired  for  year- 
round  service,  are  being  put  into  these  schools  as 
rapidly  as  possible.  Home  project  work  is  chosen 
by  the  pupils  during  the  school  period,  and  sug- 
gestions are  made  by  the  teachers.  Immediately 
on  the  close  of  school  in  the  schoolhouse  the 
teachers  begin  making  the  rounds  to  pupils' 
homes,  and  continuing  school  work  in  the  homes 
and  on  the  farms  of  the  big  school  district,  mak- 
ing suggestive  criticisms,  conferring  with  parents, 
and  building  the  life  of  the  school  into  the  life  of 
the  home  and  its  interests.  This  coupling  up  of 
teachers  and  parents,  of  school  work  and  home 
work,  of  making  culture  a  handmaid  of  practical 
efficiency,  is  one  of  the  most  wholesome  of  all 
ways  to  get  full  value  out  of  school-funds.  Pro- 
fessor W.  D.  Christie  and  his  co-workers  in  In- 
diana are  getting  for  the  children  what  the  Gary 
Plan  does  not  provide,  credit  for  graduation  for 
this  home  work  when  it  is  creditably  done.  A 
similar  work  at  Strawberry  Hill,  la.,  about  which 
Mr.  E.  G.  Cooley  writes  with  enthusiasm,  shows 
that  the  idea  is  good  leaven.  When  farmers  can 
see  better  crops,  better  stock,  and  better  home- 
makers  as  a  direct  result  of  combined  school- 
home  work,  paying  school-taxes  begins  to  look 
like  a  definitely  profitable  investment.  The  old 
education  was  a  sort  of  sacrosanct  system,  a  re- 
mote and  aloof  affair  not  to  be  criticised  by  any 
except  those  who  were  on  the  inside,  those  who. 


The  Educational  Community  57 

being  themselves  the  system,  might  criticise 
themselves  and  scold  each  other  to  their  heart's 
delight.  The  new  education  puts  the  parent  on 
a  level  with  teachers,  puts  a  concrete  measure 
into  the  hand  of  the  taxpayer,  makes  it  not  only 
possible,  but  quite  certain  that  pointed  and  direct 
questions  will  be  asked  of  usurping  school  boards 
and  of  back-looking  teachers,  and  that  answers 
equally  pointed,  practical  and  concrete  will  be 
insisted  on  in  reply.  Getting  full  value  back  to 
taxpayers  for  school-funds  invested  lies  close  to 
the  heart  of  the  whole  problem  of  social  respon- 
sibility and  of  community  efficiency. 


CHAPTER   IV 

The  Child-Community 

A  New  Viewpoint 

From  the  time  that  Theodor  Schwann  discov- 
ered the  cellular  structure  of  animal  bodies,  in 
1839,  there  has  been- an  inevitable  drive  of  inves- 
tigation in  all  the  departments  of  study  touching 
human  life.  How  the  cells  unite  to  begin  a  new 
living  organism ;  how  the  first  live  cell  multiplies 
and  becomes  all  the  different  kinds  of  cells  which 
go  to  make  up  a  male  or  a  female  body ;  how  the 
life  of  the  father  and  mother  affect  the  original 
cell  life  of  the  embryo,  both  the  past  life  and  the 
condition  at  the  time  the  child  is  begotten  and 
during  the  period  of  gestation;  how  the  life  of 
the  father  and  mother  affect  the  child  during  its 
first  sixty  months  of  individual  life;  how  other 
lives  than  those  of  the  parents  impress  infant 
organisms ;  how  intelligence  first  manifests  itself 
and  how  it  grows ;  how  the  delicate  tissues  of  the 
infant  body  are  organized  by  activity,  and  how 
the  control  of  the  parts  of  the  body  to  satisfy 
desires  fixes  the  tendencies  and  temperament  of 
the  child;  how  the  child  learns — ^by  unconscious 
imitation,  conscious  imitation,  conscious  effort 
in  play  or  work;  how  what  the  child  inherits 

58 


The  C hild-C ommunity  59 

physically  from  its  parents  becomes  the  instru- 
ment of  what  it  inherits  from  them  after  it  is 
born — from  them  and  others  who  touch  its  life; 
how  children  learn  during  the  different  stages  of 
growth  and  development;  how  they  affect  each 
other;  how  a  bold  and  forward  child  or  a  back- 
ward or  defective  child  influences  the  lives  of 
other  children;  how  the  different  types  of  chil- 
dren influence  each  other  in  fixing  their  tastes 
and  inclinations — the  world  never  knew  how  little 
it  knew  of  things  it  most  ought  to  know  till  biol- 
ogy began  to  lay  new  foundations  for  self-knowl- 
edge, self-reverence  and  self-control.  The  whole 
science  of  medicine  has  been  revolutionized.  The 
science  of  psychology  and  the  art  of  education 
have  been  born  anew.  The  function  and  pro- 
grams of  religion  have  been  put  upon  an  entirely 
new  basis.  This  new  age  in  the  life  of  the  world 
is  bound  to  be  child-centered  to  an  even  greater 
degree  perhaps  than  Jane  Addams  meant.  The 
creation  of  the  Bureau  of  Child  Welfare  in  the 
national  government  marked  a  new  departure  in 
governmental  activities,  and  it  is  in  tvtry  way 
fortunate  that  this  department  had  won  a  fixed 
place  before  world  politics  distracted  and  diverted 
attention  from  this  most  fundamental  work. 

The  discovery  of  the  community  is  mainly 
fruitless,  as  has  been  noted,  until  the  discovery 
is  made  local,  until  citizens  discover  themselves 
as  a  social  unit  with  definite  common  rights  and 


60       Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

duties.  The  discovery  of  the  child  and  of  the 
child-community  is,  in  the  same  way,  largely  in 
vain  till  it  is  made  local.  Parents,  each  new  group 
of  parents,  must  be  guided  to  see  not  only  that 
childhood  is  a  distinct  and  definite  stage  of  human 
life,  but  that  there  is  a  child-community  wherever 
there  are  two  or  more  children.  The  growth  of 
this  idea  into  a  conviction  is  about  all  that  is 
needed  to  work  a  complete  and  greatly  needed 
revolution  in  all  local  schools.  And  not  until  the 
existence  of  a  real  child-community  is  recognized 
and  provided  for  in  each  locality  can  it  be  at  all 
properly  said  that  the  ideals  of  community 
efficiency  have  become  national.  Each  locality 
already  has  in  its  public  school  the  nucleus  of  a 
child-community,  but  almost  never,  as  yet,  is  the 
local  public  school  organized  or  operated  or  even 
capable  of  being  organized  and  operated  as  a 
child-community,  without  sacrifice  of  some  of  the 
most  cherished  educational  traditions  which  we 
inherited  from  the  "good  old  days"  when  the 
child  was  an  unknown  quantity  and  a  child-com- 
munity unheard  of.  Mr.  Randolph  S.  Bourne 
says:  "The  movement  for  vocational  education 
has  done  nothing  more  valuable  than  to  show  us 
how  far  we  are  still  from  realizing  the  public 
school  as  a  child-community,  first  of  all  as  a 
quickening  life  and  only  secondarily  as  an  educa- 
tional institution,"  Writing  about  "Continuation 
Schools"  for  boys  and  girls  employed  in  gainful 


The  C hild-C ommunity  61 

occupations,  in  the  New  Republic,  June  10,  1916, 
Mr.  Bourne  says : 

"The  states  are  one  after  another  jacking  up 
the  child-labor  limit  to  sixteen  years.  We  are 
rapidly  coming  to  the  conviction  that  the  school 
should  care  for  all  children's  activities  up  to  that 
age  *  *  *  gy^  this  means  that  we  shall  have  to 
have  a  reinvigorated  school.  It  must  not  be  a 
place  where  children  are  kept  when  they  long  for 
the  freedom  of  outside  work.  It  must  be  a  place 
where  full  opportunity  for  expression  is  provided 
for  each  child  in  a  varied  life  of  study  and  work 
and  play.  It  must  be  an  organic  life  and  not  an 
institution.  *  *  *  The  vocational  movement  goes 
blundering  on  in  amazing  disregard  of  the 
psychology  of  the  worker.  Even  the  docile  Ger* 
man  child,  it  is  said,  must  be  coerced  into  his 
admirable  continuation  school,  where  he  gets  a 
thorough  orientation  in  his  relations  to  his  work, 
the  community,  and  his  comrades.  What  are  ad- 
mirable trades  and  studies  going  to  mean  to  boys 
and  girls  who  are  doing  the  most  rudimentary 
work,  their  impulses  undirected,  their  minds 
filled  with  sex-fantasy,  personal  mirages,  and  all 
the  cheap  and  feeble  excitements  of  the  city 
streets?  The  groping  and  desiring  spirit  of  youth 
is  going  to  resist  your  most  thoughtful  schemes 
until  you  have  a  school  which  from  the  earliest 
years,  by  its  freedom,  its  expressive  life,  its  broad 
communal  and  personal  excitements,  its  contact 


62       Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

with  real  things,  provides  a  child-Hfe  which  meets 
these  inner  needs.  Our  best  American  public 
schools  already  begin  to  show  that  such  a  child- 
community  life  is  not  at  all  impossible.  Until 
we  achieve  it  generally,  our  continuation  school 
will  be  one  of  the  stop-gaps,  and  a  lusty  warning 
of  what  we  have  failed  to  achieve." 

Within  a  decade  the  idea  has  become  quite 
general  that  child  welfare  bears  the  same  relation 
to  the  community  or  social  body  as  does  the  wel- 
fare of  teeth  to  the  individual  human  body.  Fancy 
parks,  golf  links,  club  houses,  and  lodge  rooms  are 
an  index  of  what  the  grown  folk  of  a  locality 
think  of  their  own  pleasures,  comforts  and  con- 
veniences. Their  provisions  for  child-life,  for  the 
health,  robust  constitutions,  proper  food  and  ex- 
ercise, and  constructive  activities  of  all  their 
babes  and  children,  are  the  sure  and  sensitive 
index  of  the  mind  of  the  adult  community  toward 
their  best  products,  their  boys  and  girls.  Prac- 
tically all  the  problems  of  community  health  cen- 
ter here — in  the  physical  welfare  of  the  babies, 
the  children  and  youths.  Practically  all  the  prob- 
lems of  community  morals  center  here,  in  the 
provisions  which  a  community  makes  to  surround 
little  and  youthful  lives  with  abundant  attractive 
contacts  with  life  and  its  activities,  with  aims  and 
goals  which  lure  toward  the  splendid  and  away 
from  the  sordid  outlooks  upon  the  present  and 
future.    The  esthetic  problems  of  community  life 


The  Child-Community  63 

and  efficiency  center  upon  the  varied  objects  of 
appreciation  which  are  brought  before  young  and 
ebullient  lives,  elements  of  refinement  not  left 
out  of  the  common  program  until  tastes  are 
blunted  and  appreciative  powers  are  withered. 
For,  let  it  be  said  again  and  again,  babies  are 
born  to  the  whole  community,  they  go  to  school 
to  the  whole  community,  their  health  and  vigor 
and  initiative  and  energy,  their  ideals  of  citizen- 
ship, parenthood,  neighborhood  and  nation  and 
world,  are  fashioned  for  them  by  the  whole  com- 
munity both  before  they  come  into  the  world  and 
after  they  arrive.  This  new  viewpoint  of  com- 
munity efficiency  must,  it  seems,  very  largely 
govern  the  development  of  active  social  con- 
science toward  responsibility  and  betterment. 

BEFORE  BABIES  ARE  BORN 

Jacob  and  Laban  and  their  kind  knew  certain 
laws  of  breeding  quadrupeds  thousands  of  years 
ago.  The  laws  of  breeding  human  bipeds  are  not 
yet  known,  but  there  are  tendencies  so  striking 
as  to  challenge  directly  the  common  sense  of 
every  community  in  America.  No  town  or  vil- 
lage but  has  its  "fool,"  some  walking  witness  of 
an  ancestor's  folly.  There  are  not  institutions 
enough  in  America  to  care  for  half  the  feeble- 
minded boys  and  girls  who  ought  to  be  cared  for 
by  the  communities  which  permitted  them  to  be 
born.     "Chicago  has  more  than  fifty  thousand 


64       Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

mental  defectives  walking  its  streets  every  day, 
with  absolutely  no  restrictions  upon  their  actions. 
New  York  state  has  more  than  thirty-two  thou- 
sand known  feeble-minded  persons,  less  than  half 
of  whom  are  cared  for  in  public  institutions  of 
any  kind.  There  is  no  way  of  knowing  exactly 
how  many  other  mental  defectives  are  roaming 
at  will  in  that  state,  but  there  is  good  authority 
for  believing  that  the  number  is  almost  as  large 
as  that  for  the  known  defectives.  Indiana  has 
thirteen  hundred  feeble-minded  boys  and  girls, 
men  and  women,  in  one  state  institution,  with 
more  than  one  hundred  on  the  waiting  list.  Dr. 
Bliss,  head  of  this  institution,  declares  that  there 
are  at  least  five  thousand  other  mental  defectives 
at  large  in  the  state,  allowed  to  roam  without  re- 
striction and  to  intermarry  and  propagate  their 
kind."  Marc  N.  Goodnow  reports  this  in  Chi- 
cago. One  Michigan  county  has  fifty  known  de- 
fectives who  cannot  be  admitted  to  any  state 
institution  until  other  counties  are  permitted  to 
reach  their  apportionment.  Six  hundred  and 
eight  pupils  out  of  sixteen  hundred  and  seventeen 
in  one  Ohio  public  school  are  deferred  at  least 
two  years  from  the  easy  local  standard,  and 
nearly  half  of  these  are  defectives.  'In  another 
school  are  two  low  grade  morons  barely  able  to 
find  their  way  to  their  desks.  Dr.  William  J. 
Hickson,  director  of  the  psychopathic  laboratory 
of  the  Chicago  Municipal  Court,  examines  and 


The  C hild'C ommunity  65 

tests  most  of  the  boys  and  young  men  who  come 
before  the  Boys'  Court,  female  offenders  in  the 
Morals  Court,  and  the  men  and  women  who  come 
before  the  court  of  Domestic  Relations.  He  re- 
ports that  eighty-four  per  cent  of  boy  offenders 
are  feeble-minded;  seventy  per  cent  of  profes- 
sional prostitutes  are  feeble-minded;  almost 
eighty-five  per  cent  of  two  hundred  and  forty- 
five  boys  from  the  Boys'  Court,  averaging  about 
eighteen  and  three  fourths  years  of  age,  were 
morons,  persons  of  arrested  mental  development. 
Massachusetts  and  New  Jersey  are  finding  large 
farms  invaluable  in  caring  for  these  marks  of 
community  neglect. 

Put  alongside  these  records  the  frightening  in- 
crease in  tendencies  to  insanity,  paranoia  and 
mental  derangements,  to  tuberculosis  and  other 
tissue  ravages,  to  physical  defect  and  deformity, 
and  the  evidence  is  conclusive  that  community 
sentiment  has  not  been  answering  aright  concern- 
ing the  causes  of  these  results.  When  physicians 
and  public-spirited  citizens  brought  before  the 
citizenship  of  Iowa,  some  years  ago,  the  need  for 
sterilizing  both  sexes  who  showed  strains  of  in- 
sanity, defiance  of  public  right  to  invade  the  re- 
gion of  private  inclination  to  propagate  was 
hurled  forth  from  pulpits  and  platforms. 

Community  sentiment,  as  the  final  court  of 
appeal  in  America,  must  be  brought  to  give  judg- 
ment based  upon  full  view  of  all  the  obtainable 


66       Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

facts,  and  to  answer  straight-out,  as  self-govern- 
ing Americans  are  strangely  loth  to  do,  this  ques- 
tion: Has  the  community  both  a  right  and  a 
duty  to  say  what  children  have  a  right  not  to  be 
born  by  fixing  beyond  all  question  what  men 
cannot  become  fathers  and  what  women  cannot 
become  mothers? 

Discussion  of  a  child-community  in  any  town- 
ship, town  or  city  is  perfectly  superficial  and 
chiefly  artificial  unless  the  men  and  women  of  the 
locality  are  willing  to  look  human  facts  in  the 
face  and  shape  community  sentiment  and  action 
accordingly.  Has  a  drunken  father,  while  drunk, 
a  right  to  beget  a  child  crippled  in  body  or  mind 
or  both  and  dump  his  paternal  wreckage  on  the 
community  for  support?  Has  a  man  with 
syphilis  or  gonorrhoea  a  right  to  beget  a  child 
while  afflicted  with  these  filthy  poisons,  to  im- 
peril the  life  of  either  an  innocent  or  a  guilty  wife 
or  woman,  and  to  inflict  upon  the  community 
another  piece  of  human  wreckage?  Has  a 
woman,  young  or  older,  a  right  to  become  a 
female  peril  to  every  boy  and  young  man  in  the 
locality  by  her  weak  willingness  to  yield  her 
body  as  an  instrument  of  lust?  The  results  of 
community  dodging  of  these  questions  can  be 
seen  in  every  locality  by  any  person  who  walks 
about  with  open  eyes  and  understanding  vision. 
It  is  quite  fascinating  to  watch  the  feathers  fly 
from  the  bird   of  freedom   when  some  human 


The  C hild-C otntnunity  €7 

Roman  candle  lets  himself  loose  oh  our  great 
republic  able  to  lick  all  out  of  doors — but  only 
about  one  out  of  hundred  applicants  for  enlist- 
ment in  the  navy  can  give  a  clean  bill  of  health 
and  be  accepted.  As  a  matter  of  quite  unpal- 
atable fact,  the  people  of  most  American  com- 
munities are,  as  yet,  too  cowardly  to  face  any 
reality  till  they  are  driven  up  against  it  by  some 
unescapable  emergency.  Our  mental  laziness  and 
moral  idiocy  are  the  real  problem  of  preparedness, 
as  every  honest  citizen  knows.  Playgrounds  and 
pop-guns  will  be  of  slight  avail  until  communi- 
ties square  up  against  intelligent  conviction  of 
public  duty  toward  the  child  before  the  baby  is 
born. 

Another  phase  of  this  matter  drives  the  com- 
munity to  invade  stores  and  factories  and  look 
about  with  seeing  eyes.  Social  and  economic 
conditions  have  forced  millions  of  girls  and 
women  to  become  bread-winners.  What  effect 
does  the  nature  of  their  work,  hours  of  labor, 
wages  received,  hours  of  rest  and  leisure,  social 
conditions  while  at  work,  relations  to  employers 
and  managers  and  foremen,  and  all  physical  con- 
ditions surrounding  them  have  upon  the  final  fact 
of  motherhood?  Are  the  women  being  qualified 
to  give  babies  a  decent  outfit  of  blood  and  tis- 
sues? Have  they  time,  inclination,  and  intelli- 
gence enough  to  give  unborn  babes  a  chance  to 
come  into  this  world  with  better  than  a  fighting 

(6) 


68       Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

chance  to  find  life,  liberty,  and  a  way  to  find 
happiness?  National  attention  is  being  called  to 
these  questions  but,  here  again,  each  local  com- 
munity must  intelligently  form  its  opinions  and 
enforce  its  convictions  for  its  own  safety  as  well 
as  for  the  salvation  of  the  nation  and  race.  Piti- 
less publicity  is  the  price  of  both  safety  and  san- 
ity before  the  child-community  is  formed. 

WHEN  BABIES  ARE  BORN 

Latest  official  figures  show  that  ten  per  cent 
of  white  babies  born  alive  die  during  the  first 
month.  This  frightful  infant  mortality  would,  of 
course,  be  lower  if  all  parents  were  healthy.  But 
ability  to  beget  and  bear  children  has  never  yet 
demanded  from  parents  sense  enough  to  feed, 
bathe,  dress,  and  exercise  infants  properly  after 
they  arrived.  Communities  have  a  big  invest- 
ment in  the  pangs  and  privations  of  every  woman 
who  goes  into  the  shadows  of  death  to  bring 
back  a  life.  Each  community  owes  to  each  of 
its  mothers  a  debt  which  is,  in  some  states,  find- 
ing expression  in  mother's  pensions.  But  no 
grant  of  money  in  token  of  public  duty  toward 
motherhood  can  possibly  take  the  place  of  insur- 
ing to  all  mothers  the  best  of  expert  help  in 
proper  rearing  of  the  young.  District  nurses, 
visiting  nurses,  school  nurses  are  being  provided 
by  many  communities  where,  ten  years  ago,  such 
public  action  would  have  been  counted  impos- 


The  Child-Community  69 

sible.  Attention  has  simply  been  attracted  and 
held  to  the  general  need  until  community  senti- 
ment has  justified  the  expenditure.  Mothers  in 
homes  of  refinement  and  culture  welcome  the 
visits  of  these  public  messengers  of  good  cheer  as 
much  as  do  less  fortunate  women  who  find  in 
them  confidential  friends.  The  activity  of  the  rep- 
resentatives of  community  interest  in  mothers  is 
evidence  that  American  civilization  is  alive  at  its 
roots.  Increasing  solicitude  by  all  Churches  for 
the  lives  and  welfare  of  all  babies  in  the  parish, 
an  interest  marked  by  active  supervision  of  cradle 
rolls  and  font  rolls  is  a  like  evidence  of  a  vig- 
orous quality  of  religious  life. 

Many  mothers  in  many  communities  have  to 
work,  work  hard,  work  often  where  they  cannot 
take  their  little  ones.  To  have  babies  unpar- 
ented by  either  or  both  of  the  parents  is  bad  for 
the  parents,  worse  for  the  children,  but  worst  of 
all  for  the  community.  Radical  social  reform- 
ers have  seriously  urged  that  changed  conditions 
of  parenthood,  of  economic  and  social  conditions, 
make  it  increasingly  demanded  that  all  babies  be 
taken  as  soon  as  they  are  weaned,  if  not  before, 
and  be  reared  in  specially  equipped  institutions 
precisely  as  communities  do  with  school  children 
of  a  few  years'  later  growth.  Such  an  extension  • 
of  public  responsibility  may  have  to  come  if 
motherhood  is  legitimized  regardless  of  pater- 
nity,  and   women   are   permitted   to    contribute 


70       Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

physical  maternity  without  moral  parenthood  to 
the  state.  Traditional  morals  may  prevent  this 
for  a  time — true  religious  teaching  of  youths 
would  prevent  it  for  all  time.  But  it  is  not  im- 
possible, apparently,  that  the  nations  including 
America  will  try  what  sort  of  citizehs  may  be 
raised  up  from  bottle-fed  and  institution-bred 
infants.  The  very  least  of  the  difty  of  the  Church 
in  all  communities  is  to  join  in  with  the  kinder- 
garten movement  and  see  to  it  that  nurseries  in 
sufficient  number  and  conveniently  located  are 
provided  to  give  good  mothering  to  all  babies  not 
well  cared  for  by  their  own  mothers.  A  high 
rate  of  infant  mortality  brands  a  community  with 
the  stigma  of  indifference  to  its  own  best  inter- 
ests. Dr.  Evans  reports  in  the  Chicago  "Tri- 
bune" that: 

The  New  York  milk  committee  sends  a  letter 
annually  to  255  municipal  health  departments 
asking  for  the  infant  death  rate.  The  last  report 
is  from  241  cities.  The  cities  showing  highest 
rate  of  infant  mortality  are  Reading  and  Norris- 
town,  in  Pennsylvania;  Raleigh  and  Wilmington, 
in  North  Carolina;  Perth  Amboy  and  Passaic,  in 
New  Jersey;  Montgomery,  Alabama;  and  Nash- 
ville, Tennessee.  The  baby  death  rate  in  Passaic 
is  nearly  six  and  a  half  times  as  great  as  in  La 
•Crosse,  the  rates  being  193.6  and  30.6,  respec- 
tively. The  cities  with  rates  sixty-five  and  under, 
and  every  such  city  is  entitled  to  place  on  the 
honor  list,  are  La  Crosse,  Wis.;  Ogden;  Omaha; 
East    Orange;    Seattle;    San    Diego;    Madison, 


The  Child-Community  71 

Wis. ;  Berkeley,  Cal. ;  Portland ;  Waltham,  Mass. ; 
Oshkosh;  Sioux  Falls;  Salt  Lake  City;  James- 
town, N.  Y.,  and  Montclair,  N.  J.  Perhaps  when 
the  New  York  milk  committee  puts  out  its  report 
on  1916  they  will  limit  their  list  to  cities  whose 
birth  registration  is  accepted  by  the  United 
States  census  office. 

The  sign  is  unmistakable  of  a  new  day  in  civic 
conscience  when  cities  and  states  begin  to  vie 
v/ith  one  another  in  putting  the  rate  of  infant 
mortality  to  the  lowest  possible  minimum.  Even 
in  many  rural  districts  it  is  bound  to  become 
common  to  find  prominently  located  stations  for 
distribution  of  certified  milk,  ice  in  season,  medi- 
cines and  health  suggestions,  the  community 
making  it  a  matter  of  public  conscience  to  supply 
every  need  and  necessity  for  the  health  and 
healthy  growth  of  all  its  babies.  High  taxes 
judiciously  spent  for  the  health  and  happiness  of 
helpless  persons  is  an  investment  which  all  citi- 
zens may  worthily  covet. 

WHEN  BABIES  ARE  WEANED 

When  an  infant  can  feed  and  dress  itself  with- 
out direct  help,  and  when  it  is  able  to  propel 
itself  about  with  reasonable  safety,  it  leaves  the 
stage  of  negligible  sex  characteristics  and  be- 
comes to  society  a  male  or  female  child,  a  boy  or 
a  girl.  Fun  begins,  usually,  about  that  time — 
fun  for  itself  and  all  the  neighbors  as  well  as 
for  members  of  the  household.    The  infant's  fun 


72       Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

has  been  brought  to  it  and  forced  upon  it;  boys 
and  girls  prefer  to  hunt  out  their  own  sources  of 
enjoyment,  to  escape  from  watchful  oversight  and 
explore  the  planet  for  personal  experiences.  At 
this  precise  point,  when  baby  ceases  to  be  a  toy 
and  searches  for  its  own  significant  experiences, 
is  where  most  human  lives  begin  to  be  wrecked, 
suppressed,  ruined  by  adult  ignorance  of  child- 
life  and  the  meaning  of  human  hunger  for  expe- 
riences. Sympathetic  eyes  and  ears  find  no  more 
pathetic  occurrences  on  this  earth  than  the  pit- 
iable incidents  always  happening,  in  which  the 
eager  search  of  children  for  something  to  do, 
something  to  enjoy,  some  experience  by  which  it 
yearns  to  be  fed,  begins  to  be  crushed  back  and 
down  by  ignorant,  blind,  tired,  nervous  parents, 
nurses,  or  other  adults.  Only  toward  the  end 
of  the  last  century  did  systematic  knowledge  of 
child-life  come  to  be  a  recognized  science.  Pai- 
dology,  the  science  of  childhood,  is  not  a  study 
merely  of  theories  but  of  living  facts,  male  and 
female  facts,  of  boys  and  girls  in  the  process  of 
gaining  experiences,  of  gathering  and  sorting 
and  classifying  the  results  of  doing  now  one 
thing  and  now  another  with  insistent  restless- 
ness. It  is  one  of  the  finest  and  most  practical 
of  all  studies.  It  is  the  foundation  of  moral  par- 
enthood, of  intelligent  guidance  of  the  lives 
brought  into  the  world  that  they  may  be  full  and 
finished  lives.    When  it  becomes,  by  demand  of 


The  Child-Community  73 

community  sentiment,  a  condition  of  parenthood 
regardless  of  classical  or  vocational  education, 
the  exceptional  parents  of  the  present  will  only 
be  forerunners  of  the  usual  parents  of  the  future. 
Available  literature  on  this  subject  is  becoming 
voluminous.  The  reading  of  it  and  practice  of  its 
truths  ought  to  be  universal  among  parents  and 
teachers. 

One  of  the  striking  discoveries  of  this  new 
field  of  study  is  that  play  is  a  necessity  and  not 
a  luxury  to  a  child.  The  whole  impulse  to  give 
expression  to  impulses  and  all  the  challenges  to 
action  which  beat  upon  the  shores  of  fresh  lives 
compel  the  child,  challenge  it  to  various  actions. 
Play  is  the  child's  work.  This  work  needs  only 
guidance,  suggestions,  and  a  chance.  Work  in 
the  spirit  of  play  is  the  only  work  well  done  by 
anyone  on  this  earth.  To  do  what  one  likes  to 
do,  to  have  joy  in  doing  something  well;  to 
have  joy  multiplied  by  winning  the  approval  of 
companions,  playmates,  loved  ones;  to  run  in 
and  out  of  the  big  world  full  of  surprises  with 
keen  zest  in  playing  the  game  till  weariness  or 
despair  comes  on ;  to  build  into  the  tissues,  fibers, 
cells  of  the  physical  body  the  motor  memories 
which  only  can  make  it  possible  to  do  things 
"without  thinking,"  to  meet  the  spirit  of  adven- 
ture with  explorations  especially  into  all  for- 
bidden places;  to  indulge  the  instinct  of  perver- 
sity by  doing  something  else  or  doing  the  same 


74       Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

thing  in  some  unheard-of  way;  to  clash  wills 
noisily,  thresh  out  conflicting  purposes,  settle  dif- 
ferences in  a  most  heartless  but  thoroughly  satis- 
factory way;  to  build  into  the  inscrutable  store- 
house of  pure  memories  the  permanent  materials 
of  mental  growth;  to  be  alive  to  every  living 
thing  and  share  mystic  company  with  unseen 
realities — the  indescribable  wonders  and  untold 
possibilities  of  the  play-world  through  which  the 
Creator  prompts  the  child  to  unconscious  prep- 
aration for  meeting  with  abundant  and  ready 
resources  the  big  world  just  beyond  child-world, 
here  is  the  place  and  time  and  way  for  making  or 
marring  human  lives.  Europe  is  at  war — ^because 
boys  have  been  taught  to  play  soldier  and  girls  to 
play  nurse.  Not  all  the  duplicities  of  politicians 
and  abstract  ideas  could  send  men  to  war  in  the 
spirit  of  play  even  unto  death  unless  boys  had 
died  ten  thousand  times  in  play  warfare,  built 
the  play  of  war  into  their  whole  lives  from 
infancy  onward.  It  ought  to  be  plain  to  every 
thinking  mind  that  if  ever  war  is  banished  from 
human  relations  the  equivalents  of  war  must  be 
built  into  the  play  of  the  child-community.  The 
practice  of  getting  all  the  facts  first,  of  giving 
everybody  a  fair  chance  to  clear  himself,  of  in- 
sisting upon  a  square  deal  even  if  every  little 
bully  in  town  has  to  be  threshed  thoroughly  up 
to  the  standard,  of  putting  discussion  before  force 


The  C hild-C ommunity  75 

and  not  afterward,  of  helping  children  to  find 
their  own  way  to  the  best  decisions  instead  of 
forcing  them  to  take  without  reason  the  will 
of  others — simple  common  sense  in  guiding  the 
experiences  of  children  is  the  way  of  community- 
making  and  of  nation-making. 

The  Playgrounds  Association  of  America  is 
ready  to  supply  all  needed  facts  to  prove  to  the 
most  reluctant  citizen  that  a  well-equipped  and 
well-supervised  playground  is  the  very  highest 
type  of  community-insurance  against  the  perils 
of  unhealthy,  stupid,  unmoral,  and  immoral 
human  life.  As  such  it  is  an  investment  worthy 
of  generous  consideration  and  support  by  all 
citizens.  It  is  the  magnet  drawing  to  it  by  count- 
less ties  the  lives  whose  experiences  measure  the 
richness  and  poverty  of  both  present  and  future. 

THE  COMMUNITY  OF  BOYS  AND  GIRLS 

Childhood  is  a  distinct  world.  It  remains  ever 
with  the  children.  Grown  persons  who  try  to  be 
children  are  childish  freaks  just  as  freakish  as 
would  children  be  if  embodying  the  experiences 
of  mature  life.  Every  child  has  a  right  to  be 
understood  as  a  child,  known  by  sympathetic 
insight  for  what  it  is  and  not  for  what  is  not 
and  cannot  be.  False  standards  of  judging  chil- 
dren are  set  up  and  maintained  by  women  who, 
when  attention  is  called  to  it,  invariably  admit 
their  unconscious  but  far-reaching  mistake.  "The 


76       Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

baby  is  so  good!  He  doesn't  give  me  the  least 
bit  of  trouble."  That  judgment  lies  at  the  root 
of  a  vicious  mistake.  Babies  and  children  are 
judged  good  or  bad  according  to  the  discomfort 
or  inconvenience  which  they  cause  to  grown  per- 
sons, wholly  regardless  of  any  sense  of  goodness 
or  badness  experienced  by  the  little  life.  Pro- 
fessor Patterson  DuBois  has  been  conspicuous 
among  effective  leaders  in  teaching  parents  and 
teachers  the  penalties  which  they  heap  upon 
themselves  and  the  cruelties  which  they  pile  with 
crushing  weight  upon  the  little  ones  who  cannot, 
in  any  slightest  degree,  understand  the  basis  of 
judgment  by  which  they  are  misjudged.  The 
history  of  parental  discipline  and  of  criminal  law 
is  one  page  of  utter  blackness,  quite  probably  the 
blackest  of  all  pages  in  human  history,  writing 
into  immature  and  inexperienced  lives  the  harsh 
and  unfeeling  judgments  of  adults  to  whom  chil- 
dren "gave  trouble."  They  have  been  whipped, 
beaten,  struck,  starved,  tortured  in  body  and 
anguished  in  soul,  imprisoned,  hung  by  the  neck 
till  dead  and  killed  in  countless  ways — all  be- 
cause they  did  not  know  and  respect  abstract 
notions  of  property  rights,  personal  privileges, 
and  the  whole  world  of  adult  notions.  Boys 
have  been  beaten  with  clubs  until  unconscious 
for  stealing  when  they  did  not  have  one  slightest 
notion  of  theft  within  them.  Contemplating  this 
vast  iniquity  of  injustice  thrust  down  into  the 


The  Child-Community  77 

child- world,  men  who  doubt  the  reality  of  judg- 
ment beyond  death  feel  in  their  inmost  souls 
that  there  ought  to  be  a  time  for  the  restitution 
of  all  things,  an  occasion  when  the  shameless 
brutalities  of  men,  the  bruised  bodies  and  quiv- 
ering souls  of  children  may  stand  up  as  wit- 
nesses of  deeds  done  in  the  flesh. 

Boys  are  not  little  men.  Girls  are  not  little 
women.  They  are  simply  little  bundles  of 
accumulating  experiences,  of  child-experiences, 
of  lives  a-hungered  for  contacts  with  life.  They 
do  not  at  all  know  nor  can  they  know  the  world 
of  abstractions,  of  principles  and  laws  and  rules 
which  adults  manufacture  for  themselves.  What 
can  a  boy  know  of  physical  or  moral  parenthood 
until  the  physical  organs  and  moral  equipment 
of  parenthood  are  part  of  his  positive  expe- 
riences? What  can  a  girl  know  of  the  expe- 
riences of  a  woman's  life?  Without  the  expe- 
riences, what  have  they  in  themselves  by  which 
to  set  up  standards  of  judgment  or  moral  con- 
duct? They  do  have,  boys  and  girls,  inexorable 
standards  of  judgment  for  themselves  and  others 
of  their  kind.  Given  even  a  decent  chance  to 
develop  and  exercise  these  standards  they  moral- 
ize each  other,  socialize  each  individual,  and 
punish  each  other  with  pitiless  severity — and 
when  they  get  this  punishment  they  take  it  from 
each  other  and  profit  greatly  by  it,  provided  no 
cowardly  and  blundering  male  or  female  giant 


78       Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

comes  bolting  into  their  world  with  alien  stand- 
ards. Grant  the  fact  that  their  biting  ridicule  or 
stinging  blows  are  hard  things  for  interested 
parents  and  teachers  to  endure — they  are  actually 
harder  for  those  who  look  on  or  who  hear 
about  it  than  they  are  for  the  youngsters  them- 
selves to  endure.  They  have  their  world.  They 
sort  out  good  stuff  from  driftwood  with  unerr- 
ing skill,  and  they  can  do  more  to  make  good 
wood  of  spoiled  material  than  can  all  the  adults 
in  the  community.  One  of  the  most  successful 
business  men  in  America  testifies  that  he  owes 
most  of  his  success  to  the  fact  that  his  fond 
mother  compelled  him  to  wear  his  beautiful  yel- 
low curls  till  he  was  almost  twelve:  and  he  had 
to  thresh  every  boy  in  the  whole  school  and 
combinations  of  boys  and  make  every  last  one 
of  them  want  to  wear  long  hair  and  be  a  Sam- 
son. 

The  truth  cannot  be  too  frequently  repeated 
nor  too  strongly  insisted  upon,  that  the  first 
twelve  years  of  human  life  is,  above  all  else,  the 
material-gathering  period.  Experiences — repeti- 
tion of  such  experiences  as  are  "liked,"  avoidance 
of  such  experiences  as  brought  or  left  an  un- 
pleasant impression,  eager  hunger  for  new  and 
untried  ones,  a  ready  inclination  to  try  anything 
once  at  least,  a  new  word,  a  new  act,  a  new 
impression — ^here  in  the  child-world  is  the  chal- 
lenge to  the  whole  community  to  make  much  of 


The  Child-Community  79 

the  child-community.  Schools  must  be  more  and 
more  this  sort  of  a  life.  Homes  must  share  more 
largely  in  it.  Churches  must  not  only  be  more 
childlike  but  make  themselves  great  feeders  to 
the  child-community.  All  institutions  and  enter- 
prises of  the  community  must  share  a  lively  part 
in  filling  up  to  the  limit  of  possibility  the  sort  of 
world-life  which  the  community  chooses  to  see 
lived  out  within  it  by  its  boys  and  girls.  Those 
who  are  fit  for  companionship  with  children  will 
make  it  a  special  privilege  to  be  with  them  in 
the  fruitful  hours  between  supper  time  and  bed- 
time, preferably  on  the  playground,  sharing  their 
experiences,  suggesting  new  ones,  stimulating^ 
inspiring,  guiding. 

"We  cannot  bring  Utopia  by  force. 
But  better,  almost,  be  at  work  in  sin, 
Than  in  a  brute  inaction,  browse  and  sleep." 


CHAPTER  V 

The  Youth-Community 

The  Human  Problem 

Childhood  puts  big  responsibilites  upon  par- 
ents and  citizens  generally.  What,  then,  shall 
be  said  of  the  social  responsibility  put  up  to  these 
same  parents  and  citizens  by  youths?  If  the 
first  twelve-year  period  of  human  lives  is  a 
challenge  to  the  spirit  of  efficiency  in  community 
life,  how  shall  the  challenge  of  the  second  twelve 
years  be  measured  and  made  clear? 

Physicians  cannot  yet  tell  all  the  significance 
of  the  structural  changes  which  mark  the  passage 
from  childhood  to  full  manhood  and  womanhood. 
The  psysiological  revolution  is  striking.  Even 
more  striking  is  the  inner  change  which  comes 
upon  the  life.  Childhood  is  being  left  behind  to 
other  children.  The  traditions  of  the  child-world 
are  growing  weaker:  the  instincts  of  man- world 
and  woman-world  are  growing  stronger.  The 
old  and  familiar  foundations  of  life  are  being 
broken  up — and  no  new  foundations  are  yet  laid 
on  which  to  build.  Where  the  child  knew  itself 
to  be  a  creature  of  parental  control,  the  youth 
resents  control  by  anybody  outside  of  himself 
but  has  no  anchorage  of  self-control  fixed  in  his 

80 


The  Youth-Community  81 

new  body.  And  the  changes  keep  crowding 
from  within.  The  youth  is  no  more  the  child  he 
was;  he  is  unknown  to  his  parents  and  to  every- 
one else,  even  to  himself.  New  notions  seize 
him,  new  impulses  move  him,  new  passions  pos- 
sess him — and  he  is  stranger  to  them  all.  Notice 
of  the  new  order  of  parental  relations  usually 
takes  the  form  of  maternal  notice  to  the  so-called 
head  of  the  house  in  somewhat  this  fashion: 
"John,  you've  got  to  take  charge  of  that  boy.  I 
don't  know  what  has  come  over  him.  He  used 
to  be  such  a  good  boy  but  now  he  won't  mind 
anything  I  say  to  him.  He  never  has  disobeyed 
me  so  persistently  before.  He  didn't  get  that 
from  my  side  of  the  house,  and  you  must  control 
him  from  now  on."  Wise  fathers  smile  only 
inside  at  this  announcement,  especially  if  they 
knew  mother's  side  of  the  house  in  former  years. 
There  never  was  a  woman  who  understood  a 
male  youth  in  the  process  of  growing  into  and 
managing  his  manhood,  and  the  intuitions  of  the 
sex  prompt  them  to  recognize  this  truth.  But 
father  himself  cannot  now  control  the  boy  as 
father — the  beginning  of  the  end  of  parental  re- 
sponsibility has  come.  Wise  fathers  know  this 
and  adjust  themselves  to  the  new  relationship  of 
confidential  friend,  chum,  interested  companion, 
big  brother — and  in  this  new  relationship  they 
go  with  the  lad  till  he  has  found  his  own  balance, 
his  own  moral  standards,  his  real  self. 


82       Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

Mothers  strike  the  tragedy  of  parenthood  here 
with  both  boys  and  girls,  except  they  be  un- 
usually wise  mothers.  They  yearn  more  than 
ever  before  to  play  a  large  part  in  the  life  of 
son  or  daughter,  but  find  new  interests  closing 
doors  to  them  moment  by  moment.  Being 
women,  mothers  of  their  own  children  through 
the  years  of  childhood,  they  feel  that  they  have 
a  right  to  be  consulted,  to  receive  gratitude  for 
privations  and  pains  endured,  to  keep  first  place 
in  daughter's  life  and  in  son's  consideration. 
Disappointment  and  heartache  are  bound  to  be 
their  portion  unless  they  have  been  definitely 
preparing  themselves  for  years  for  precisely  this 
crisis  in  the  life  of  the  home.  Many  mothers 
grieve  deeply  because  they  find  themselves  tak- 
ing second  place  to  some  other  woman  in  the 
confidences  of  the  girl.  Skilled  insight  and  intel- 
ligent sympathy  only  can  lead  a  mother  to  cut 
the  strings  of  the  past  as  rapidly  as  the  growing 
girl  is  cutting  them  in  her  inner  self;  to  treat 
the  girl — self-conscious  young  woman  now — for 
what  the  lass  sees  in  her  mirror  and  not  for 
what  the  mother  sees  in  her  memory.  Father 
being  more  away  from  home  and  less  in  the 
companionship  of  the  children  finds  it  far  easier 
to  adjust  himself  to  the  young  woman  who  has 
come  to  live  where  the  girl  used  to  be;  he  finds 
it  not  so  easy  to  adjust  himself  to  the  young 
man  and  his  exaggerated  ways  and  expensive 


The  Youth-Community  83 

tastes.  Insistence  is  usually  laid  upon  the  fact 
that  mother  ought  to  be  the  sponsor  for  the 
daughter  and  father  for  the  son.  Natural  human 
conditions,  as  they  are  found  in  most  homes 
where  parents  are  parents,  indicate  the  opposite. 
Father  can  enter  more  directly  into  the  young 
woman's  estimate  of  herself  and  treat  her  so 
than  can  the  mother.  Her  sex  instincts  make  it 
possible  for  the  mother  to  sympathize  intelli- 
gently with  her  youthful  son  more  directly  than 
can  the  father  whose  sex  instincts  are  far  from 
youth.  Social  justification  of  this  truth  is  found 
in  the  fact  that  almost  never  is  there  a  willing 
prostitute  who  had  a  chum  father,  a  man  on 
whom  she  could  pour  out  with  abandon  the 
wealth  of  her  new  womanly  nature  without  sug- 
gestion or  thought  of  physical  passion.  It  is  the 
girl  whose  whole  affectionate  nature  is  outraged 
by  neglect,  starved  into  abnormal  clamor,  who 
"goes  wrong"  with  riotous  abandon.  All  that 
can  properly  be  said  of  the  importance  of  inti- 
mate companionship  between  father  and  son  ap- 
plies with  equal  or  greater  force  to  the  same 
relationship  between  father  and  daughter. 

Occasional  companionship  with  parents  is 
sought  by  youths  of  both  sexes;  constant  com- 
panionship with  others  of  their  own  kind  is  a 
demand  of  their  natures.  This  truth  opens  the 
way  of  largest  parental  opportunity  and  points 
out,  at  the  same  time,  the  way  of  chief  com- 

(7) 


84       Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

munity  duty  in  their  behalf.  The  sentiment  of 
the  community  has  need  to  be  thoroughly 
aroused  to  recognize  that  the  problem  of  the 
community  of  youths  is,  ever  and  always,  a 
human  problem  grounded  in  the  qualities  of 
human  life  as  these  manifest  themselves  in  males 
and  females  between  thirteen  and  twenty-four 
years  of  age. 

What  pictures  they  are  in  all  communities, 
rural,  urban,  and  suburban,  these  youths  during 
the  first  and  second  halves  of  this  twelve-year 
period!  Backward,  bashful,  shy,  forward,  bold, 
self-poised;  vain,  vulgar,  mean,  modest,  chaste, 
noble;  scorning  memories  of  childhood,  seeing 
ideals  more  real  than  substantial  realities;  lured 
this  way  and  that,  drawn  by  invisible  pulls  and 
pushed  by  invisible  urges ;  consciences  more  deli- 
cately balanced  and  more  sensitive  than  ever 
before  or  ever  later;  seeing  themselves  magni- 
fied, glorified,  exalted  even  by  their  outstanding 
miseries;  depressed  unto  desperation;  driven  to 
choose  but  fearing  each  choice,  and  standing 
stoutly  for  choice  once  made  whether  right  or 
wrong;  walking  before  others'  opinions  as  in  a 
world  set  with  mirrors  to  reflect  what  others 
think;  walking  in  lonely  deserts  and  wavering 
as  to  whether  to  let  the  chin  drop  or  to  shove  it 
grimly  forward  as  a  sign  of  will-to-Power ;  mak- 
ing and  receiving  most  lasting  impressions; 
shaping  unconsciously  or  half  consciously  their 


The  Youth'C ommunity  85 

tendencies  to  conduct  by  what  they  do  or  leave 
undone — ^be  their  gods  many  or  but  one  true  and 
living  God  of  all  earth  and  time,  here  is  a  picture 
in  flesh  tints  .  worthy  of  his  workmanship !  In 
these  shambling,  awkward  boys,  athletic  and 
combative  youths,  lassies  quick  turning  from 
girls  to  women,  in  these  and  their  kind  as  they 
work,  study,  play,  saunter,  fight,  dream,  pray,  lie 
the  hopes  of  the  community  and  the  hope  of  the 
world. 

Youths  by  millions  might  have  been  saved  in 
this  and  past  generations  had  grown  folk  been 
willing  and  honest  to  face  the  present  problem 
of  youthful  life  as  a  human  probleim  before 
and  above  all  else,  even  though  the  science  of 
adolescence  had  not  been  begun.  Just  as  play  is 
a  law  fixed  by  the  Creator  for  the  growth  and 
development  of  the  child  so  is  companionship  a 
law  fixed  by  the  same  hand  for  the  life  and 
vigor  of  youth.  All  that  the  infant  is  comes  to 
maturity  in  the  child :  all  that  maturity  is  has  its 
infancy  in  youth.  Where  the  child  was  one 
ceaseless  question  mark,  accumulating  the  ma- 
terials of  later  life,  the  youth  is  using  these 
materials,  trying  out  first  one  implement  and 
then  another,  starting  to  shape  up  his  materials 
now  in  one  fashion  and  now  in  another,  always 
choosing,  seeking,  trying  to  find  the  tools  of  a 
career  and  the  whetting  the  tools  of  self-govern- 
ment,   for    this    is    life's    tool-choosing    period. 


86       Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

Because  of  this  constant  choosing  or  refusing  to 
choose,  the  character  which  could  not  be  shaped 
in  childhood  is  now  being  slowly  but  surely 
formed.  These  youths  in  each  community  are 
human  beings  trying  to  find  themselves,  human- 
ity deciding  what  to  do  with  what  it  finds. 
Adults  have  poor  memories  of  this  period  through 
which  they  all  came.  They,  like  youths  now, 
were  a  general  jumble  of  ideas  and  impressions, 
of  ideals  and  impulses,  of  lingering  childhood 
and  of  aspiring  adulthood.  They  were  in  their 
day  and  for  their  generation  what  youths  are 
to-day  and  for  this  generation — the  moral  battle- 
ground where  personal  character  and  the  morals 
of  the  race  are  shaped  and  determined.  Take 
from  all  the  armies  of  Europe  all  the  youths 
between  seventeen  and  twenty-four — and  how 
long  would  any  of  the  armies  endure?  Take 
from  the  struggle  for  moral  conquest  of  our  race 
the  ideals  and  pulsing  visions  of  youths  during 
the  second  twelve-year  period  of  life — who  would 
care  to  endure?  Let  parents,  teachers,  ministers, 
citizens  look  at  their  common  human  problem  of 
the  community's  youths,  and  wage  a  fair  fight: 
recognize  that  never  in  human  history  have 
human  beings  been  made  morally  good  by  not 
doing  things ;  that  dolessness  and  docility  are  not 
good  in  themselves,  but  that  youths  are  good  in 
proportion  as  they  are  good  for  something.  Let 
the  fight  be  pitched  here,  in  Youth.     Let  the 


The  Youth-Community  87 

issues  be  joined  here  and  the  fight  be  unto  death 
for  moral  victory  in  the  community,  the  nation, 
and  the  world.  If  this  fight  can  be  won,  human- 
ity can  be  made  moral  like  unto  God.  If  this 
fight  is  not  won — it  must  be  won,  for  defeat  here 
means  defeat  everywhere  and  finally.  The  issue 
of  creation  in  the  quality  of  human  creatures  is 
at  stake,  depending  on  the  standards  of  self- 
government  and  self-control  set  up  by  youths 
between  thirteen  and  twenty-four  years  of  age. 

Challenges  put  in  words  cannot  be  too  strong. 
They  are  not  strong  enough  to  waken  American 
citizens  from  lethal  sleep  and  sleep-walking. 
Millions  upon  millions,  women  and  men,  living 
on  latest  market  reports  and  newest  fashion 
sheets!  Each  community  in  the  American  na- 
tion needs  some  upheaval  to  jam  its  citizens  up 
against  the  rock  wall  of  realities,  compel  them 
to  look  fair  in  the  face  the  human  facts  which 
they  have  begotten  and  borne,  and  then  say 
with  soberness  and  sanity  what  grown  citizens 
owe  to  these  youthful  lives  in  the  swirl  of  moral 
turmoil. 

Solutions  are  idle  talk  till  the  bare  fact  of  a 
real  problem  is  seen  and  admitted.  Up  to  the 
present  moment  plans  for  community  better- 
ment and  for  practical  patriotism  are  made  to 
cover  streets  and  sewers,  theaters  and  golf  links, 
playgrounds  for  little  children — helps  for  grown- 
ups and  children.     Is  there  a  religious  denomi- 


88       Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

nation,  sect,  congregation,  or  Church  organiza- 
tion, a  community  by  its  municipal  government 
or  any  official  or  semiofficial  body,  which  has 
planned  permanent  concrete  and  definite  better- 
ments for  its  youths  outside  school  equipments? 
Children  change  much  between  the  end  of  child- 
hood and  early  maturity :  few  persons  change  the 
bent  of  their  characters  after  they  pass  twenty- 
five.  Where  is  the  real  community  problem  on 
which  social  responsibility  and  efficiency  rest? 
The  problem  is  a  human  one;  the  solution  must 
be  of  like  kind. 

SOLVING  THE  PROBLEM 
The  "boy  problem"  has  received  considerable 
attention  through  the  activities  of  the  Young 
Men's  Christian  Association  and  the  secondary 
division  of  the  organized  Sunday  School — but 
boys  keep  growing  out  of  boyhood  and  grown 
folk  keep  forgetting  or  ignoring  the  fact  that 
boys  are  their  problem.  Getting  on  the  inside 
of  these  institutions  one  is  bound  to  appreciate 
the  ideals  which  lie  behind  the  expenditure  of 
millions  of  dollars  annually — but  to  feel  the  hope- 
less impotence  of  holding  a  generation  of  boy- 
men  by  any  sort  of  institutional  activity.  Those 
who  are  highest  in  the  counsels  of  association , 
work  are  foremost  in  urging  the  helplessness  of 
any  few  workers  to  solve  the  problems  which 
deserve  and  demand  the  active  help  of  all.  The 
organized  Bible  class  of  young  men  has  proved 


The  Youth-Community  89 

to  be  the  most  flexible  and  useful  of  all  institu- 
tions among  young  men,  wherever  the  Church  is 
willing  to  give  the  young  men  a  free  hand  and 
widest  opportunity.  The  selfish  question,  What 
is  the  Church  going  to  get  out  of  this?  has 
driven  out,  and  will  continue  to  drive  out  an 
uncounted  multitude  of  youths.  Not  many  insti- 
tutions made  up  of  human  beings  are  willing  to 
live  only  in  the  hearts  of  those  they  help.  The 
experience  of  very  many  Churches  joins  with  that 
of  the  Young  Men's  Christian  Association  in 
demonstrating  that  athletics  are  good  for  the 
health  but  poor  bait  to  lure  young  men  toward 
religion.  The  new  mind  in  the  Church,  that  it 
exists  not  for  the  benefit  of  a  few  saints  but  for 
the  help  of  all  citizens,  is  promise  of  a  wider 
usefulness  than  for  many  centuries. 

The  solution  of  the  boy  problem  must  be 
largely  religious,  mainly  masculine  and  along  the 
line  of  definite  achievement. 

Boys  are  more  spontaneously  and  sensitively 
religious  between  fourteen  and  eighteen  or  nine- 
teen than  at  any  other  time  or  during  any  other 
period  of  their  lives.  They  rarely  indicate  this 
state  of  being  either  by  their  vocabulary  or  gen- 
eral demeanor,  but  these  are  usually  misleading 
and  put  on  to  hide  hearts  more  sensitive  than 
those  of  little  girls.  Boys  are  not  so  churchly  as 
girls  but  far  more  religious.  They  may  be 
harsher  in  speech  and  act  but  their  consciences 


90       Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

are  more  delicately  balanced  and  their  moral 
standards  more  fixed  and  unbending  than  those 
of  the  girls.  For  lack  of  guidance  in  self-control 
young  fellows  are  much  given  to  holding  other 
folk  to  account  by  their  new  standards  of  moral 
judgment  and  to  be  generously  indulgent  toward 
themselves — ^but  the  principles  of  right  conduct 
are  growing  within  them.  They  are  always  more 
religious  than  their  parents  even  when  parents 
are  convinced  that  they  are  most  godless — and 
all  the  power  of  religion  means  more  to  inspire, 
regulate,  and  restrain  them  in  youth  than  it  can 
possibly  mean  to  the  child  or  to  the  grown  man. 
These  youthful  males  are  more  jealous  of  their 
masculinity,  more  proud  of  its  powers,  more 
eager  to  be  rated  as  strongest  among  their  kind, 
more  ready  to  display  their  prowess  in  any  line 
which  promises  to  tax  them  to  the  utmost,  more 
virile  and  more  loyal  than  at  any  other  time  of 
their  lives.  The  last  thing  they  care  for  is  any- 
thing which  will  be  "good"  for  them,  something 
which  will  help  them  to  "be"  this  quality  or 
that;  they  want  to  do,  to  show  their  ability,  to 
be  known  as  doers  of  heroic  deeds.  Being  males 
their  whole  youth  stretches  out  after  masculine 
ideals,  strong,  vigorous,  manful  lives  who  found 
a  big  job  and  hung  to  it  till  it  was  done.  The 
solution  of  the  boy  problem  is  inherent  in  the 
nature  of  it.  Males  must  solve  it.  It  must  be 
free    of    conventionalities    and    conformities,    a 


The  Youth-Community  91 

ceaseless  challenge  to  male  sentiments  and  attri- 
butes. It  must  be  religious,  moral,  dynamic, 
present,  worthful  now  rather  than  after  death, 
significant  to  those  who  are  alive  to  this  present 
world  rather  than  to  those  who  are  dead  or  al- 
most dead.  Young  males  must  solve  it  among 
themselves — the  older  of  them,  from  eighteen  to 
twenty-four,  getting  into  the  lives  of  the  younger 
ones  and  showing  them  how  to  do  strong  things 
in  a  masculine  way.  The  moral  parenthood  of 
young  men,  the  sentiments  of  chivalry  and 
strength,  of  protection  of  the  weak  and  needy, 
of  companionship  with  their  own  kind  in  process 
of  making — these  are  the  living  factors  in  the 
solution  of  the  problem.  It  must  be  done  by 
communities,  by  all  of  the  male  youths  of  the 
community  reckoned  as  present  or  prospective 
citizens  of  the  community  and  nation.  It  must 
be  larger  than  any  one  Church  or  group  of 
Churches,  as  large  as  the  locality,  reaching  as 
far  as  the  community  of  males  ought  to  reach. 
Its  activities  are  those  of  citizenship,  of  social 
responsibility  to  the  last  degree,  of  community 
betterment  in  all  its  immediate  acts  and  remote 
purposes.  Groups  of  all  sorts  will  naturally 
spring  up  in  this  association  of  young  lives,  ath- 
letics, music,  literary,  religious,  secret,  chivalric, 
and  the  like.  The  whole  group  knows  most  how 
to  meet  and  solve  its  own  problems  if  given  any- 


92       Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

thing  like  a  fair  chance.  Selfish  institutions  of 
all  sorts  and  all  kinds  of  self-seeking  adults  will 
want  to  jump  in  and  engineer  the  association — 
and  succeed  only  in  breaking  it  up  and  driving 
boys  and  young  men  away  from  them  and  their 
cherished  organizations. 

The  "girl  problem"  is  less  talked  about  but 
more  important.  Women  must  solve  it — too 
many  men  don't  care  to  have  it  solved,  and  alto- 
gether too  many  women  have  less  concern  for 
the  highest  welfare  of  girls  than  do  most  men. 

Folk  who  face  human  facts  in  community  and 
home  life  have  slight  patience  with  the  academic 
squabbles  of  schoolmen  over  adolescent  psychol- 
ogy. They  know  that  girl  babies  are  potential 
mothers,  every  one  of  them ;  that  physical  mater- 
nity is  a  monopolizing  interest  and  not  an  inci- 
dent; that  when  nature  fits  any  organism  for  a 
given  function  the  most  powerful  compulsions 
within  that  organism  look  to  the  discharge  of 
that  function  according  to  nature  regardless  of 
social  customs,  and  that,  therefore,  one  hundred 
per  cent  of  the  youthful  woman's  life  is  social, 
seeking  companionships  which  satisfy  conjugal 
and  parental  propensities;  that  girls  are  not  so 
consciously  sexual  as  boys  but  unconsciously 
pluming  and  gowning  and  parading  themselves 
with  sex  appeals  almost  constantly ;  that  a  phys- 
ical basis  accounts  for  most  of  their  mental  states 
and  moral  notions;  that  a  wayward  girl  is  a 


The  Youth-Community  93 

vastly  more  uncertain  and  puzzling  problem  than 
is  a  willful  boy;  and  that,  because  she  is  what 
she  is,  a  girl  can  undo  faster  and  more  effectively 
than  any  other  agent  on  earth  the  work  of  moral 
parenthood  by  parents  and  teachers  and  real  pas- 
tors. Thoughtful  citizens  never  can  compre- 
hend how  many  girls  actually  glory  in  their 
ignorance  of  things  they  ought  to  know,  rely 
upon  their  helplessness  to  win  protection,  and 
go  out  to  find  protectors  as  youthful  and  ignorant 
and  primal  as  themselves.  The  dramatic  inci- 
dents which  give  setting  to  the  suicide  or  murder 
of  young  women  shock  all  adults,  throughout  the 
nation,  with  consciousness  of  total  inability  to 
understand  the  sex  duplicities  of  girls  in  the  early 
and  middle  teen  years.  But  exactly  the  same 
sort  of  deceptions  can  be  seen  almost  every- 
where in  animal  maternity.  Changes  in  fashions, 
in  social  customs,  in  topics  of  conversation,  in 
freedom  of  social  intercourse  between  the  sexes 
of  all  ages,  make  it  more  difficult  for  girls  of  this 
generation,  than  for  any  in  the  past,  to  bring 
themselves  into  clean,  chaste,  womanly  woman- 
hood, unstained  and  unspoiled  by  false  ideals  and 
perilous  habits.  And  if  the  girl  problem  is  left 
unsolved  not  all  the  nice  old  people  on  the  planet 
are  able  to  help  boys  and  young  men  solve  safely 
the  boy  problem. 

What  can  be  done?    What  ought  to  be  done? 
Probably  more  citizens   are  asking  themselves 


94       Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

questions  of  this  sort  than  are  raising  any  other 
public  problems  for  consideration.  The  nature  of 
the  problem  indicates  the  only  possible  way  of 
solving  it. 

Recognize,  first  of  all,  that  there  is  a  com- 
munity of  youth,  a  distinct  period  of  life  when 
young  persons  are  not  children  and  not  adults, 
and  yet  childish  impulses  and  mature  promptings 
are  mixed  within  them  inextricably.  This  is  a 
community  of  persons,  persons  with  many  com- 
mon interests,  persons  who  can  do  more  with 
each  other  and  for  each  other  than  can  be  done 
by  any  possible  number  of  adults.  Within  this 
community  are  two  distinct  groups,  sex  com- 
munities marked  by  sex  traits  which  mathemat- 
ical psychologists  are  likely  to  overlook.  They 
are  human  beings  living  over  within  themselves 
the  whole  ethical  history  of  humanity,  some- 
times living  the  extremes  of  it  in  successive  mo- 
ments, spanning  the  life  of  man  from  cave  crudity 
and  cruel  savagery  to  tenderest  sensibilities  of 
utmost  refinement. 

This  community  has  rights.  These  rights  are 
the  duties  of  those  who  are  outside  the  scope  of 
their  common  ties.  These  duties  rest  upon  what 
the  youths  are,  what  they  want  to  be  and  to  do, 
what  the  experience  of  the  ages  shows  they  are 
able  to  do  and  ought  to  undertake.  The  chief 
barrier  to  discharge  of  these  duties  is  the  most 
ancient   adult   prejudice   toward   youth,   an   in- 


The  Youth-Community  95 

grained  tradition  that  only  adults  have  rights 
which  adults  are  bound  to  grant,  social  and  reli- 
gious as  well  as  economic  and  educational  rights. 
"Adultomania"  is  the  descriptive  term  sometimes 
used  to  designate  the  attitude  of  mind  which 
drives  youths  away  from  the  Church,  away  from 
the  community,  away  from  homes,  out  into  the 
streets  and  dark  corners  where  adult  comfort 
and  convenience  will  be  undisturbed.  Communi- 
ties throughout  the  civilized  and  uncivilized 
world  exhibit  the  most  shameless  and — in  Amer- 
ica at  least — inexcusable  indifference  to  the 
human  rights  of  youths.  Club  rooms,  assembly 
rooms,  gymnasiums,  swimming  pools,  parlors, 
athletic  fields,  directors  of  physical  education, 
social  centers,  social  enterprises — so  many  varied 
opportunities  for  this  community  of  youth  to 
become  a  self-conscious  group  working  out  the 
solution  of  self-help  to  their  own  live  problems — 
these  are  simple  community  duties  toward  its 
youths.  No  money?  More  money  is  wasted  by 
communities  in  needless  duplication  of  stores, 
meeting-houses,  and  lodges  than  is  required  to 
finance  generously  the  beginnings  of  public  rec- 
ognition of  the  world  of  youth.  More  than  that, 
therje  is  more  money  left,  after  adults  have  wasted 
cash  to  their  heart's  full  satisfaction,  idle  money 
or  cash  bringing  in  only  a  paltry  rate  per  cent, 
enough  to  give  the  community  of  youths  such 


96       Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

facilities  as  the  community  has  never  dreamed  of. 
Lack  of  money  only  comes  from  lack  of  interest : 
interested  attention  of  parents  and  all  adults 
directed  to  the  needs  and  rights  of  youths  will 
bring  fortunes  to  lay  anew  the  foundations  of 
life  in  the  community  and  for  all  the  world. 

Cure  for  all  the  evils  of  democracy  is  declared 
to  lie  in  more  democracy.  It  is  sure  that  the 
only  cure  for  the  moral  ills  and  perils  of  the 
world  of  youth  lies  in  more  mingling  of  youth 
with  youth,  in  more  opportunities  for  the  meet- 
ing of  the  sexes  in  free  and  open  sharing  of  play 
and  work.  Segregation  of  youths  of  high  school 
age  is  always  urged  when  some  flagrant  misstep 
calls  public  attention  to  the  situation.  Shutting 
young  folk  away  from  each  other  has  been  tried 
without  avail  since  parents  first  made  themselves, 
accountable  for  the  conduct  of  their  young. 
Shutting  the  sexes  apart  just  when  the  clamors 
are  most  insistent  for  them  to  be  together  is  a 
sort  of  brute-force  discipline.  It  may  succeed  for 
a  time  sometimes :  it  is  more  likely  to  aggravate 
the  very  malady  it  is  supposed  to  cure.  Play, 
open  play,  much  organized  play;  work,  coeduca- 
tional work  which  throws  the  sexes  into  closest 
conference  on  projects  and  plans  cherished  by 
both  of  them;  through-the-week  activities  which 
identify  the  motives  and  ideals  of  religion  with 
the    common    interests    of    life;    separation    of 


The  Youth-Community  97 

groups  with  sufficient  frequency  to  make  any 
one  separation  appear  not  unusual;  practicable 
projects  of  public  moment  committed  to  the  com- 
munity of  youth  for  discussion  and  determina- 
tion; simple  human  honesty  in  recognition  of 
natural  rights  in  the  lives  of  youthful  citizens  is 
sufficient  to  work  a  complete  transformation  of 
community  life  within  a  decade.  A  high  school 
senior  was  nominated  in  a  mass  meeting  for 
membership  on  a  specially  chosen  body  to  work 
for  public  welfare  through  a  period  of  years.  The 
nomination  met  with  grins  of  incredulity  by  most 
of  the  wise  citizens  assembled,  and  an  older  and 
wiser  person  was  substituted.  By  1926,  barring 
accident,  that  youthful  citizen  will  prove  himself 
worth  more  to  the  community  in  1916  than  the 
whole  assembly  of  dignified  wiseacres  who  do 
not  know  and  would  not  believe  the  balanced 
energies  of  leadership  inside  that  lad.  The  case 
is  one  of  millions  like  it.  Adultomania  is  not  yet 
so  chastened  as  to  be  willing  to  give  the  com- 
munity of  youths  a  chance — suggestions  and  a 
chance. 

The  stress  of  human  reality  will  be  clear  or 
muddy  as  it  approaches  parenthood,  exactly  in 
proportion  to  the  chance  given  to  it  to  clarify 
itself  by  motion,  by  organized  and  directed  activ- 
ities. Youthful  men  and  women  will  bring  to 
each  other  at  the  marriage  altar  clean  competence 
to  perpetuate  the  race  and  to  make  it  more  fit 


98       Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

to  be  perpetuated  as  they  are  guided  into  whole- 
some companionships.  No  possible  number  of 
purchasable  things  can  take  the  place  in  youth- 
ful lives  of  friendships  which  are  priceless.  This 
then  is  the  debt  of  the  community  as  a  whole  to 
the  group  of  youths,  the  solution  of  the  problem 
— multiplication  of  opportunities  for  youths  to 
find  themselves,  to  find  each  other,  to  find  abun- 
dant life  in  a  life  of  social  intercourse  and  service. 


CHAPTER  VI 

The  Parent-Community 

"In  the  day  that  God  created  man,  in  the  like- 
ness of  God  made  he  him;  male  and  female 
created  he  them;  and  blessed  them,  and  called 
their  name  MAN,  in  the  day  when  they  were 
created." 

Courtship,  Marriage,  and  Divorce.  The  an- 
cient Hebrew  oracle  and  modern  science  are 
agreed  in  this,  that  maleness  and  femaleness  are 
complements  in  the  constitution  of  animal  life. 
Extremists,  like  Otto  Weininger,  would  deny 
separate  being  and  existence  to  all  women  just 
as  British  and  American  law  denied  it  to  mar- 
ried women.  Professor  Thorndyke,  in  "Individ- 
uality," sees  much  akin  in  sex  traits :  "It  appears 
that  if  the  primary  sex  characters — the  instincts 
directly  relattd  to  courtship,  love,  child-bearing 
and  nursing — are  left  out  of  account,  the  aver- 
age man  differs  from  the  average  woman  far  less 
than  manjf  men  differ  one  from  another."  Com- 
mon experience  joins  Scripture  and  science :  com- 
plete Man  requires  blending  of  sex  attributes. 
A  man  alone  is  essentially  incomplete ;  a  woman 
alone,  whether  by  choice  or  chance,  crucifies  her 
deepest  nature  and  truest  impulses.  Creationally 
the  male  and  female  require  each  other  for  their 
completeness.      Racially   they   must   mate.     In 

99 
(8) 


100     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

mating  the  man  and  the  woman  become,  both 
physically  and  ethically,  one  flesh.  They  two 
constitute  the  one  gateway  into  life  on  this 
planet.  Their  physical  urge  to  parenthood,  the 
passions  which  prompt  men  to  beget  and  women 
to  bear  babies,  are  primal,  powerful,  indispens- 
able. If  these  incentives  to  parenthood  should 
weaken,  disappear,  or  be  overmastered  by  the 
now  clamorous  demand  for  universal  use  of  con- 
traceptives all  our  human  problems  would  be 
speedily  and  finally  solved.  The  fact  of  parent- 
hood is  behind  them  all. 

A  fair  degree  of  unqualified  assertion  is  war- 
ranted, then,  in  this  particular  field,  for  parental 
sentiments  underlie  both  race  perpetuation  and 
the  worth  of  the  race  perpetuated.  The  measure 
of  intelligence  with  which  these  sentiments  are 
understood  and  guided  determines  not  only  the 
fact  of  human  society  but  also  th«  savagery  or 
refinement  of  the  civilization  which  that  society 
chooses  to  make.  Coming  closer  to  familiar  local 
conditions  as  they  affect  the  mating  of  the  sexes 
and  resulting  parenthood  we  may  look  with  rea- 
sonable expectancy  to  find  the  social  womb  out 
of  which  civilization  issues. 

Courtship,  commonly,  is  concealed  as  of  some- 
thing to  be  socially  ashamed ;  weddings  are  often 
the  scene  of  rudeness  and  of  vulgarity — as  of 
women  climbing  down  through  coal  chutes  to 
enter    church    buildings    and    get    surreptitious 


The  Parent-Community  101 

views  of  the  bride ;  babies  are  cheap,  cheaper  than 
personal  comfort  and  social  convenience ;  concep- 
tion is  avoided;  the  marriage  relation  is  turned 
over  to  the  region  of  physical  appetites  and  lust. 
Deaths  outnumber  births  in  very  many  localities, 
and  usually  in  what  are  known  as  high  social 
circles.  Provision  by  the  community  for  the 
meeting  and  courtship  of  its  young  women  and 
young  men  measures  the  level  of  community 
sentiment  toward  this  process  of  incalculable  so- 
cial importance.  One  look  up  and  down  Main 
Street  in  the  early  evening  shows  the  commu- 
nity's answer  to  this  human  quest.  Boys  and 
girls  come  up  through  youth  to  early  maturity, 
citizenship  and  parenthood  hopelessly  unin- 
formed or  viciously  misinformed  concerning 
things  they  have  most  right  to  know  fully,  and 
without  dynamic  motives  dominating  their  intel- 
ligence. If  the  policy  of  silence  led  parents  to 
sow  to  the  wind,  they  and  all  society  are  reaping 
whirlwind. 

Divorce  has  come  to  be  not  merely  a  national 
scandal  but  a  real  peril.  Legislators,  and  even 
many  churchmen  who  ought  to  know  better, 
multitudes  who  are  shocked  by  results  but  blind 
to  causes,  clamor  for  uniform  divorce  laws.  As 
if  uniform  painting  of  pesthouses  would  cure 
smallpox ! 

The  number  of  divorces  granted  is  appalling. 
The  fatal  social  malady  is  disclosed  more  surely, 


102     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

however,  by  the  comparison  of  the  number  of 
applications  for  divorce  with  the  number  of  wed- 
ding ceremonies  licensed.  The  increasing  pro- 
cession of  disappointed  wives  and  husbands  ap- 
pealing to  the  court  to  untie  their  legal  bonds 
is  one  of  the  saddest  pictures  of  contemporary 
life.  Court  calendars  have  had  to  be  consulted 
in  great  numbers  because  these  statistics  are 
not  commonly  separated  in  judicial  reports  of 
vital  statistics.  For  a  period  of  five  years  end- 
ing with  1915,  records  in  the  north  Central  States 
show  an  average  of  one  divorce  granted  for  each 
five  and  two-thirds  marriages,  and  one  divorce 
applied  for  to  each  four  and  three-tenths  mar- 
riages. In  a  number  of  counties  there  was  either 
a  divorce  applied  for  or  one  pending  in  court  for 
each  two  and  four-tenths  marriages.  The  num- 
ber of  children  made  orphans  or  half  orphans 
appears  not  to  be  so  great  as  in  California,  where 
Protestant  Episcopal  Bishop  Moreland  reported 
forty  per  cent  of  the  children  in  the  orphanages 
of  the  state  as  children  of  divorced  parents. 

This  state  of  affairs  might,  possibly,  not  have 
become  so  disastrous  if  young  people  had  been 
taught,  generally,  to  know  the  difference  between 
a  wedding  and  a  marriage,  and  for  this  ignorance 
ministers  of  the  gospel  are  more  blamable  than 
anyone  else  for  they  all  know  that  any  preacher 
in  good  standing  can  fill  an  auditorium  with  an 
audience  of  interested  young  folk  as  often  as  he 


'  The  Parenf-C ommunity  103 

announces  a  message  on  courtship  and  marriage 
and  home  life.  It  is  Httle  short  of  an  insult  to 
millions  of  families  broken  up  by  needless  igno- 
rance when  churchmen  resolve  and  resolute 
bravely  over  the  consequences  of  their  shameless 
neglect  of  public  duty. 

Marriage  is  a  process.  A  wedding  is  an  event. 
Anyone  designated  by  law  can  perform  a  wed- 
ding ceremony  to  legalize  or  solemnize  a  mar- 
riage, pronounce  the  sanction  of  society  and  the 
Church  upon  the  mating  of  a  man  and  a  woman 
— but  they,  ministers  or  civil  officers,  can  never 
marry  anyone.  If  a  man  and  woman  want  to 
marry  each  other  rt  is  their  task  to  fulfill  the  con- 
ditions of  the  process  by  which  two  lives  are 
blended  into  one  and  two  bodies  become,  physio- 
logically and  racially,  one  flesh.  This  process  is 
continuous,  a  process  of  subordination  of  each 
one  not  to  the  other  but  to  their  union  which  is 
the  home.  Where  two  persons  are  wedded  but 
this  process  is  thwarted,  they  are  living  in  a  state 
of  moral  adultery  even  if  their  cohabitation  is 
made  legal  by  a  civil  contract.  A  wedding  is 
possible  only  by  the  joining  of  right  hands — 
under  western  customs — indicative  of  a  union  of 
wills  to  enter  upon  the  marriage  process  and  rela- 
tion. If  this  union  of  wills  persists  the  union  of 
persons  is  consummated  during  the  passing  of 
years.  In  their  physical  parenthood  their  union 
is  physically  consummated  with  relation  to  the 


104     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

race;  in  their  moral  parenthood,  the  fulfillment 
of  paternal  and  maternal  relations  with  the  off- 
spring, their  ethical  union  is  consummated  with 
relation  to  society  and  civilization.  If  the  union 
of  wills  is  balked  for  any  cause  there  can  be 
neither  union  of  persons  nor  of  personalities; 
they  do  not  blend  but  clash  more  or  less  noisily. 
By  the  abuse  of  the  marriage  relation  both  the 
man  and  the  woman  may  fall  to  a  level  of  lust 
not  to  be  found  elsewhere  in  the  whole  animal 
creation.  The  possibility  of  highest  happiness 
through  the  intelligent  use  of  the  marriage  rela- 
tion carries  with  it  the  possibility  of  unhappiness 
to  the  same  extreme.  In  immoral  parenthood 
and  discordant  family  life  the  two  cannot  become 
one,  except  as  a  legal  fiction,  but  they  abide 
separate,  discontented,  disappointed,  fruitless, 
thwarted  of  all  life's  choicest  happiness. 

These  are  not  abstruse  propositions  of  philos- 
ophy but  plain  statements  of  observable  and 
verifiable  fact.  The  breakdown  of  the  Church  as 
a  public  institution  contributing  to  public  wel- 
fare is  nowhere  more  marked  than  in  her  past 
failure  to  teach  the  truth  which  has  most  of  all 
to  do  with  human  happiness  and  well-being. 
The  fact  that  Protestantism  rejected  the  sacra- 
mental view  of  marriage  is  no  excuse  for  almost 
unforgivable  ignorance  and  unconcern  toward 
truths  so  close  to  the  foundations  of  individual 
and  social  welfare.    The  deplorable  facts  of  the 


The  Parent-Community  105 

whole  divorce  business  do  not  rise  at  the  court- 
house but  at  the  church  house,  and  no  amount 
of  zeal  to  get  people  marvelously  converted  will 
ever  excuse  one  minister  at  the  bar  of  final  judg- 
ment for  failure  to  do  his  part  in  helping  young 
folk  to  be  intelligently  fit  for  marriage  and  par- 
enthood, nor  will  it  make  up  for  the  individual 
and  social  misery  due  to  plain  neglect  of  minis- 
terial duty  toward  young  people  and  the  com- 
munity. 

A  distinctively  home-centered  civilization,  such 
as  was  handed  over  to  this  generation,  may  not 
be  ideal  nor  fitted  to  endure  the  strain  of  revo- 
lutionized social  relations.  The  solemnity  with 
which  marriage  vows  were  taken  may  have  been 
artificial,  the  beauty  of  home  life  a  fancy,  and 
constancy  of  affection  a  pretense.  This  genera- 
tion may  simply  be  more  "natural"  than  its  for- 
bears. Candor  compels  the  admission  that  the 
community  does  not  now  insist  upon  either  con- 
stancy or  fidelity  to  the  explicit  and  implied  obli- 
gations of  parenthood  and  race  culture.  Mar- 
riage is  often  regarded  as  respectable  when  it  is 
as  loveless  and  legal  as  a  partnership  contract  to 
peddle  fish.  The  marriage  is  almost  never 
thought  of  now  as  a  means  of  sanctification ;  it  is 
a  convenience  subject  to  sexual  compatibility.  A 
civil  officer  in  a  Michigan  county  seat  has  per- 
formed in  the  courthouse  nearly  a  third  of  the 
two  thousand  wedding  ceremonies  licensed  re- 


106     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

cently.  Compliance  with  legal  requirements  and 
no  thought  of  sacredness  is  mainly  sought.  An 
Ohio  minister  asked  a  shrinking  bride-to-be  if 
the  marriage  about  to  be  consummated  were  her 
first.  Without  a  tremor  she  said  that  it  was. 
The  groom,  unable  to  stand  the  steady  gaze  of 
the  minister,  prompted  her  to  tell  him  the  truth. 
With  perfect  unconcern  she  said,  "I  have  been 
married  nine  times." 

Conditions  like  these  are  not  confined  to  back- 
ward sections.  They  are  found  in  counties  hav- 
ing largest  per  capita  wealth  and  high  average  of 
agricultural  civilization.  Roman  Catholic  com- 
munities are  being  invaded  with  lowered  marital 
fidelity  despite  the  age-long  hostility  of  that 
Church  for  nonobservance  of  the  marriage  sacra- 
ment. The  fact  of  drifting  is  unmistakable; 
where  the  drift  is  taking  the  communities  of 
America  is  not  clear.  If  sexual  promiscuity  and 
barnyard  ethics  increase  much  more  social  hon- 
esty may  compel  the  legitimating  of  polygamy 
and  polyandry.  Pagan  polygamy  cannot  be 
greatly  different  from  the  kind  now  possible 
under  our  customs  and  laws.  It  is  more  a  ques- 
tion of  physical  endurance  than  of  morals  if 
marriage  partners  are  preferred  four-abreast 
rather  than  tandem. 

A  few  old-fashioned  folk,  like  Professor  F.  W. 
Foerster  of  Zurich,  insist  that  religion  is  the  only 
final  solution  of  marriage  and  the  sex  problem. 


The  Parent-Community  107 

If  this  is  true  it  is  the  urgent  duty  of  teachers 
of  personal  religion,  in  both  class  room  and 
pulpit,  to  come  down  out  of  the  clouds  and  stay 
this  side  of  the  hereafter,  teach  with  absolute 
plainness  a  religious  view  of  the  human  body, 
and  show  young  folk,  before  it  is  everlastingly 
too  late,  how  to  glorify  God  in  their  bodies  of 
flesh  or  find  out  that  there  is  nothing  else  in  this 
world  with  which  they  can  glorify  him.  If  home 
life  becomes  increasingly  pagan,  can  either 
Church  or  state  build  a  civilization  either  Chris- 
tian or  religiously  moral?  Or  ought  we  to  do  in 
domestic  relations  what  August  Comte  believed 
science  would  ultimately  do,  "conduct  God  to  the 
frontier  and  dismiss  him  with  thanks  for  his  pro- 
visional services"? 

Pessimists  might  be  made  happy  by  contem- 
plating only  this  side  of  American  community 
life.  The  actual  situation  is  not  all  dark.  False 
optimism  alone  denies  that  there  is  any  real 
darkness.  True  optimism  fears  no  fact  but  faces 
whatever  is,  with  determination  to  make  it  bet- 
ter. Parents,  thousands  of  them  in  America,  are 
the  chums  and  confidants  of  their  children,  keep- 
ing themselves  pure  by  constant  contact  with 
the  innocence  of  childhood,  meeting  the  perfectly 
natural  curiosity  of  children  with  equally  nat- 
ural candor  and  truth,  planting  in  the  children 
as  occasion  offers,  sacred  truths  which  take 
root  in  the  emotional  groundwork  of  chivalry, 


108     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

loyalty,  self-respect,  and  consideration  for  others, 
attitudes  and  motives  which,  fortunately,  nature 
plants  afresh  in  each  new  youthful  life.  Such 
parents  and  children  are  the  pledge  and  proph- 
ecy of  a  cleaner  and  worthier  social  life.  They 
are  the  nucleus  in  each  community  of  a  general 
sentiment  which  must  shame  the  willfully  child- 
less, inspire  and  instruct  the  ignorant  among 
young  parents,  adopt  truer  standards  of  value 
of  childhood  and  parenthood,  and  above  all  else 
fit  boys  and  girls  for  intelligent  conjugal  and 
parental  relations,  for  physical  and  moral  par- 
enthood, and  not  let  youths  blunder  their  way 
to  the  marriage  altar  in  blind  sex  impulse  and 
uncontrolled  passion.  Valuable  agencies  are 
available  for  precisely  such  work  in  all  Amer- 
ican communities,  social  and  religious  groups, 
and  these  will  be  mentioned  in  the  proper 
chapters. 

PHYSICAL  AND  MORAL  PARENTHOOD 
Sweeping  condemnation  of  all  divorces  is  easy, 
popular  and — ^foolish.  Divorce  is  often  a  wom- 
an's protective  tariff  against  male  brutality  and 
a  man's  final  recourse  against  incurable  female 
animalism.  The  male  brute  and  the  female  ani- 
mal, not  the  divorce,  are  the  real  problem.  All 
the  laws  on  marriage  and  divorce  capable  of 
being  compiled  will  never  prevent  vulgar  igno- 
rance from  prostituting  possibilities  of  utmost 
happiness  and  making  of   them   a  living  hell. 


The  Parent-C ommunity  109 

Needless  ignorance  and  callous  indifference  to  the 
simplest  truths  of  sex  physiology  and  sex  hygiene 
probably  account  for  more  applications  for  di- 
vorce, and  for  more  family  rows  that  never  get 
to  the  courts,  than  all  other  causes  combined. 
Untold  numbers  of  physical  and  mental  invalids 
would  be  saved  to  health  and  happiness  by  a 
community  sentiment  which  would  insist  upon 
definite  preparation  for  parenthood  before  ever 
young  folk  are  permitted  to  marry. 

Physical  parenthood  includes  the  ability  to  be- 
get or  give  birth  to  children  and  to  provide  food, 
shelter,  and  protection  during  the  period  of  infan- 
tile helplessness.  The  intimate  nature  of  the 
facts  involved  in  physical  parenthood  has  led, 
during  the  past,  to  some  most  damaging  assump- 
tions. It  has  been  generally  assumed,  for  ex- 
ample, that  it  is  the  height  of  indelicacy  to 
discuss,  except  in  the  privacy  of  medical  consul- 
tation, the  facts  involved  in  the  possession,  exer- 
cise, and  control  of  primary  organs  of  sex;  but 
not  at  all  indelicate  to  know  in  silence  of  fright- 
ful cruelties  perpetrated  upon  helpless,  ignorant 
folk  close  by.  Prostitution  as  a  profession  has 
been  assumed  to  be  necessary  to  sate  the  more 
vigorous  sex  powers  of  males  and  to  make  it 
safe  for  ladies  to  go  abroad.  Illicit  congress  has 
been  assumed  to  be  necessary  to  the  health  of 
unmarried  males  but  not  at  all  essential  to  the 
physical     well-being     of    unmarried    females — 


110     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

wherefore  a  double  standard  of  morals  tacitly 
agreed  upon  even  in  the  face  of  much  noisy  agi- 
tation on  the  surface  demanding  continence  from 
both  sexes.  Males,  of  course,  according  to  as- 
sumption, are  always  the  seducers  and  females 
their  passive  and  irresponsible  victims — so  deeply 
ingrained  is  this  assumption  that  it  is  regarded 
as  impossible  to  convict  a  woman  of  murder  in 
Cook  County,  Illinois,  twenty-three  of  them, 
some  cold-blooded  self-confessed  female  murder- 
ers, having  been  acquitted  without  one  convic- 
tion. It  has  been  assumed  that  young  girls  are 
always  as  innocent  as  babes  but  young  boys  and 
young  men  are  impure  wolves.  Venereal  dis- 
eases are  assumed  to  be  private,  not  to  be  men- 
tioned as  social  perils,  and  that  reporting  and 
segregating  all  cases  of  gonorrhoea  and  syphilis 
in  pesthouses  is  a  preposterous  intrusion  into  per- 
sonal liberty. 

~  Enlightened  public  opinion,  community  senti- 
ment, is  the  one  force  competent  to  dethrone 
these  false  assumptions  and  to  put  in  their  places 
rational  conclusions  based  upon  the  plain  facts 
of  physical  human  nature.  The  facts  must  be- 
come generally  known  and  be  related,  in  the 
minds  of  a  majority  of  local  citizens,  to  common 
welfare.  Mr.  F.  H.  Whitin  strikes  directly  to 
the  heart  of  all  these  problems  of  physical  sex 
relations  in  an  address  published  in  "Social 
Hygiene"  for  April,  1916.    As  secretary  for  the 


The  Parent-Community  111 

Committee  of  Fourteen,  Mr.  Whitin  speaks  with 
abundant  first-hand  knowledge  as  well  as  with 
the  authority  of  wide  research.  Concerning  seg- 
regation of  prostitution  Mr.  Whitin  declares: 
"There  is  a  rising  tide  of  opinion  that  continence, 
while  not  the  normal  sex  life  of  the  male,  is 
possible  and  hygenic,"  and  he  adds,  "the  evil  will 
continue  to  exist  so  long  as  any  influential  part 
of  the  community  believes  in  a  masculine  sex 
necessity."  So  long,  in  other  words,  as  the  com- 
munity assumes  that  abnormal  male  lust  must 
be  accommodated  just  so  long  will  some  males 
cultivate  abnormal  lust  and  find  equally  lustful 
females  who  will  sell  or  give  their  bodies  till  lust 
is  glutted.  The  poor  half-wits  sold  in  commer- 
cial prostitution,  known  as  white  slaves,  are  not 
the  chief  sex  peril,  as  everybody  knows  who  gets 
to  know  community  life  from  the  inside.  The 
whole  business  roots  back  into  abnormal  pas- 
sions fired  by  stimulants.  Commercialized  pros- 
titution could  not  exist  six  months  without 
alcohol — and  brewers,  distillers,  and  their  dance- 
hall  agents  know  it.  The  immense  sums  paid 
for  "protection"  come  more  from  sales  of  liq- 
uors at  high  prices  than  from  the  bodies  of  girls, 
even  though  these  are  speeded  up  like  mill  hands 
to  entertain  as  many  guests  as  possible  each 
twenty-four  hours.  Final  social  conviction  crys- 
tallizing into  vigorous  public  sentiment  will  be 
possible  only  when  all  obscurities  of  words  are 


112     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

banished  and  facts  are  looked  at  in  their  bald 
plainness— depraved  men  buying  the  bodies  of 
girls  for  lust. 

Social  peril  from  venereal  poisons  must  like- 
wise be  dragged  out  of  concealment.  Lists  of 
the  diseases,  defects  and  deformities  directly  due 
to  these  filthy  poisons  are  easily  obtainable  and 
always  frightening.  .Official  figures  show  the 
nation  becoming  insane  faster  than  it  is  growing 
in  population.  State  boards  of  health  make 
insistent  appeals  to  citizens  to  take  note  that 
increasing  feeble-mindedness  is  undermining  the 
stability  of  the  state.  City  health  officials  have 
appealed  for  state  aid  to  combat  the  ravages  of 
tuberculosis  and  sexual  diseases.  Rural  districts 
have  been  shocked  over  disclosures  of  the  cause 
of  prevalent  female  diseases,  death  in  confine- 
ment, premature  births,  and  infants  born  blind 
or  hopelessly  deformed.  This  in  the  years  1915 
and  1916!  Communities  have  more  at  stake  here 
than  in  almost  any  other  item  of  public  welfare. 
Pesthouse  segregation  of  cases  of  venereal  dis- 
eases is  vastly  more  important  than  in  cases  of 
smallpox ;  only  with  the  latter  its  disfigurements 
appear  on  the  face  while  the  results  of  the  peril- 
ous sexual  diseases  are  more  likely  to  appear 
in  the  bodies  of  wives  and  children.  With  more 
than  fifteen  million  school  children  reported  to 
the  United  States  Commissioner  of  Education  as 
physically  defective,  and  with  officials  rejecting 


The  Parent-C omtnunity  113 

the  great  majority  of  applicants  for  enlistment 
in  army  and  navy,  some  sort  of  moral  earthquake 
ought  to  be  loosed  to  rouse  community  senti- 
ment from  its  civic  lethargy  and  direct  it  power- 
fully to  causes  which  are  not  at  all  hard  to  locate 
and  remove.  The  time  is  far  past  when  citizens 
can  be  dignifiedly  ignorant  of  duty  and  pray 
piously  over  human  depravity — in  other  places. 
Citizens  generally  will  find  a  new  attitude  on 
the  part  of  physicians.  Preventive  measures  now 
occupy  more  medical  attention  than  does  the  dis- 
pensing of  drugs,  community  health  rather  than 
dosing  for  symptoms.  A  changed  community 
sentiment  toward  the  character  and  function  of 
physicians  will  set  community  welfare  forward 
by  leaps.  Communities  ought,  for  example,  to  set 
up  and  hold  to  as  high  moral  standards  for 
physicians  as  for  ministers  or  bankers.  That 
done,  the  determination  of  divorces  would  most 
fittingly  be  left  to  a  board  of  one  or  two  physi- 
cians and  a  judge.  A  physician  can  go  more 
directly  to  the  heart  of  the  situation  and  find  out 
more  quickly  the  real  cause  of  domestic  brawls 
and  incompatibilities  than  can  all  the  legal  wolves 
who  batten  on  open-court  divorce  proceedings. 
Physicians  on  salary  as  servants  of  the  commu- 
nity— a  wise  step  already  taken  by  some  spe- 
cially favored  communities — ^have  it  in  their 
power  to  act  as  counselors  to  youths,  to  young 
parents,  and  older  folk  and,  in  this  capacity,  to 


114     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

prevent  multitudes  from  making  shipwreck  of 
their  physical  and  moral  health.  The  work  of 
physician-ministers  has  been  a  benediction  to 
many  communities,  men  who  brought  personal 
friendship  and  friendly  counsel  into  their  prac- 
tice along  with  their  professional  skill.  Enlight- 
ened community  sentiment  can  hasten  better  con- 
ditions covering  the  whole  field  of  physical 
parenthood. 

Moral  parenthood,  in  some  of  its  phases,  is 
already  the. most  popular  community  sentiment 
in  America.  It  underlies  the  whole  of  public 
school  and  Church  school  education,  for  all  true 
teaching,  wherever  and  by  whomsoever  it  is  done, 
is  an  expression  of  parental  instincts  and  passion. 

Communities  already  say  to  parents,  Your  boy 
and  girl  are  to  be  more  than  son  and  daughter 
to  you,  they  are  to  be  citizens  of  the  community ; 
this  social  relation  is  so  important  that  we  insist 
upon  taking  your  children,  at  whatever  age  we 
agree  upon,  and  parenting  them  during  the  best 
of  their  waking  hours  during  the  entire  educable 
period  of  their  lives:  we  will  provide  generously 
for  their  higher  education  and  surround  it  with 
all  possible  lures  to  th^,  but  their  primary  and 
secondary  education  for  efficient  citizenship  is 
our  community  duty  to  them  and  to  you  and  to 
our  whole  social  group;  we  will  call  young 
women  and  young  men  to  this  job  of  parenting 
all  our  children,  pay  them  as  little  as  possible, 


The  Parent-Community  115 

and  encourage  you  to  feel  increasingly  confident 
that  your  duty  is  mostly  to  furnish  the  children 
and  school  taxes  to  keep  up  the  system.  Much 
confusion  in  the  minds  of  both  parents  and  teach- 
ers would  be  cleared  away  if  only  this  commu- 
nity message  were  made  thus  explicit,  plain,  and 
true  to  facts.  The  institution-loving  instinct  of 
most  folk  past  twenty  years  of  age  would  get  a 
wholesome  jolt.  Homes  and  schools  would  un- 
doubtedly be  of  higher  grade  and  not  so  far  apart 
in  processes  of  instruction  and  modes  of  disci- 
pline. Unified  education  of  children  would  be 
more  certain  in  place  of  the  parts  of  several 
different  kinds  of  education  so  commonly 
perpetrated  on  helpless  children  by  parents  and 
teachers  and  playmates. 

Memorizing  of  bare  and  unrelated  facts  and 
juggling  with  abstract  symbols  would  give  way 
in  schoolrooms  to  a  more  parental,  and  therefore 
more  natural  and  normal  guidance  of  all  the 
experiences  of  all  children.  Relations  of  confi- 
dential friendship,  between  children  and  the 
teachers  who  come  into  their  lives  as  moral  par- 
ents, and  between  the  physical  parents  of  boys 
and  girls  and  those  who  help  to  carry  the  respon- 
sibilities of  moral  parenthood,  would  become 
inevitable.  Identical  oversight  would  be  main- 
tained in  home  and  school  over  everything  that 
pertained  to  the  physical  growth  and  moral  devel- 
opment of  all  the  community's  growing  citizens. 

(9) 


116     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

Better  than  all  else,  perhaps,  would  be  the  wider 
recognition  of  the  truth  so  happily  discovered  by 
some  parents,  that  when  parents  make  an  intelli- 
gent business  of  the  job  of  moral  parenthood 
both  public  schools  and  Sunday  Schools  of  the 
traditional  sort  are  superfluous  and  tremendously 
costly  luxuries.  But  the  "would  be"  and  the  "is" 
are  far  apart,  needlessly  so.  Women  all  over  the 
world  are  rearing  babies,  women  who  are  not  fit 
to  raise  poultry.  Hundreds  of  babies  are  born 
into  this  world  unwelcome  accidents  to  one  born 
as  the  result  of  prayerful  parental  design.  Mil- 
lions, as  Olive  Shriner  notes,  are  not  so  much 
born  into  this  world  as  damned  into  it,  and  the 
privilege  of  being  damned  into  existence  is  by 
no  means  monopolized  by  the  babies  of  poverty- 
beset  parents.  Poor  little  rich  children  and  poor 
little  middle-class  babies  join  some  of  the  poor 
little  slum  infants  in  the  great  democracy  of  in- 
fantile misfortune. . 

Strange  as  it  may  appear  at  first  glance,  biting 
condemnations  from  pulpit  and  platform  of  par- 
ents and  public  schools  are  quite  popular  and 
provoke,  grateful  approval  and  applause  from  the 
mob.  Nods  of  approbation  greet  vigorous  denun- 
ciations, often  by  those  who  are  themselves  most 
guilty  and  don't  know  it.  Those  who  get  close 
to  many  parents  and  teachers,  who  talk  with  them 
informally  about  babies  and  children  and  youths, 
who  touch  the  springs  of  parental  solicitude  and 


The  Parent-Community  117 

uncover  the  heart  of  parental  responsibility — 
these  find  a  surprising  and  significant  situation. 
Even  the  parents  and  teachers  who  make  the 
most  conspicuous  failure  at  the  job  of  moral  par- 
enthood, most  of  them  are  doing  the  best  they 
know  how  and  deplore  their  insufficiency  often 
in  tears.  No  one  taught  them  how.  Religion 
has  been  so  occupied  with  futurism  and  educa- 
tion with  symbolism  that  the  priceless  arts  of 
parenthood  were  almost  never  brought  within  the 
apprehension  and  comprehension  of  young  folk. 
They  blindly  blundered  into  parenthood  and  with 
sinking  heart  see  the  field  of  parental  folly — too 
late.  An  almost  hysterical  determination  to  sup- 
ply deficiencies  in  practical  education  prompts 
many  to  try  the  opposite  extreme  from  silence 
and  thrust  upon  boys  in  some  vigorous  way  the 
meaning  of  a  male  body,  and  to  force  girls  to 
know  the  creational  stewardship  implanted  in 
the  body  of  every  girl  child  born  into  the  world. 
Sex  Education.  A  disastrous  policy  of  silence 
may  easily  be  followed  by  a  yet  more  disastrous 
policy  of  talk.  The  rights  of  children  to  know  all 
the  facts  of  their  own  bodies  cannot  be  disputed. 
The  immediate  right  of  young  folk  to  know  all 
the  facts  of  physiology  and  hygiene  is  equally 
clear.  Discussion  rises  over  whose  is  the  duty 
to  meet  these  rights,  and  when  and  how.  The 
wide  chasm  between  common  adulthood  and  all 
childhood  creates  most  of  the  discussion. 


118     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

Many  children  always  have  and  likely  always 
will  know  far  more  than  their  parents  suspect  of 
sex  facts  and  sex  relations,  but  it  is  a  knowledge 
of  the  intellect  and  not  of  experience.  The  lan- 
guage in  which  this  knowledge  is  gained  and 
expressed  may  be  vile,  to  adults,  but  the  chil- 
dren's knowledge  is  more  innocent  and  less  vul- 
gar than  that  of  most  adults.  Indeed  the  very 
innocence  of  the  child  mind  is  often  the  most 
baffling  element  confronting  grown  folk  who 
would  talk  with  little  ones.  Even  the  shockingly 
vulgar  language  common  among  boys  represents 
a  more  innocent  mind  and  a  less  evil  heart  than 
much  of  the  more  guarded  speech  of  adults.  This 
holds  good  even  during  many  of  the  years  when 
boys  are  held  criminally  accountable  for  their 
pranks.  Children,  furthermore,  like  adults,  are 
not  withheld  from  indiscretions  by  knowing  the 
facts  which  are  involved.  The  driving  impulse 
to  seek  adventure,  to  find  new  experiences,  is 
much  stronger  in  them  than  in  older  and  more 
chastened  folk.  The  urge  of  the  procreative  in- 
stincts lies  wholly  outside  of  intellect  and  depends 
not  at  all  on  how  much  or  how  little  one  knows. 
No  one  is  ever  "old  enough  to  know  better." 
When  this  urge  is  coupled  up  with  the  spirit  of 
physical  and  moral  adventure  the  resulting  com- 
bination of  social  impulses  is  sufficient  to  account 
for  perfectly  natural  consequences  among  healthy 
young  animals  even  in  the  best-regulated  fam- 


The  Parent-C ommunity  119 

ilies.  In  other  words,  young  folk  and  older  folk 
are  able  to  exercise  self-control  and  "hold  steady" 
in  circumstances  where  control  and  steadiness 
are  hardest,  not  by  reason  of  any  quantity  of 
knowledge  but  by  motives  rooted  in  the  emo- 
tional groundwork  which  underlies  action. 

Adult  notions  of  what  a  child  ought  to  know 
are  likely  to  be  the  usual  grotesque  misapprehen- 
sions of  child  life.  A  child  ought  to  know  what 
it  wants  to  know:  the  immediate  curiosity  of  a 
young  child  is  the  measure  of  what  it  wants  to 
know — and  it  has  a  sublime  right  to  be  told  the 
truth,  as  much  as  can  be  assimilated  then  and 
there,  and  not  be  made  the  victim  of  outrageous 
lies.  A  youth  has  a  right  to  know  and  ought  to 
know  all  that  can  be  known  without  physical 
experience,  the  whole  truth  without  sugar-coat- 
ing of  any  sort ;  and  the  youths  will  get  it  if  it  is  to 
be  had,  if  not  openly  and  with  mutual  understand- 
ing at  home  then  secretly  and  perilously  away 
from  home.  Youths  of  both  sexes  have  an  inde- 
feasible right  to  know  all  that  can  be  known  out- 
side the  marriage  relation.  They  are  infinitely 
more  interested  in  this  field  of  truth  than  in  lit- 
erature and  mathematics,  and  they  ought  to  be  if 
they  are  normally  healthy  human  beings.  Per- 
sonal hygiene,  care  of  the  body,  diet,  bathing, 
exercise,  and  study  is  an  eminently  proper  sub- 
ject for  class  room  instruction  either  with  or 
without  the  sexes  meeting  apart.     But  a  class 


120     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

room,  at  any  time  or  in  any  building,  is  about  the 
last  place  on  this  earth  where  any  specific  in- 
struction in  sex  hygiene  ought  to  be  given — and 
anyone  who  has  not  wholly  forgotten  what  it 
meant  to  be  boy  or  girl  in  middle  teen  years 
would  know  it  without  argument.  Formal  lec- 
tures on  sex  anatomy,  physiology,  and  hygiene 
are  always  fraught  with  peril  when  given  to 
groups  of  unmarried  folk,  and  tragedies  which 
have  shocked  the  continent  show  it.  Real  par- 
ents wisely  resent  the  intrusion  of  anyone  into 
the  sacredest  of  all  parental  and  filial  privileges 
— the  binding  close  by  interchange  of  confidences 
of  mothers  with  sons  and  fathers  with  daughters. 
Under  all  circumstances  this  needed  instruction 
of  the  young  should  be  in  the  way  of  informal 
and  quiet  conversation  with  small  groups  or 
individuals.  Real  boys  and  girls,  flesh  and  blood 
youths,  are  to  be  fitted  for  intelligent  physical 
and  moral  parenthood.  There  is  no  mythical 
"typical"  youth  or  "average"  pupil.  Young 
women  and  young  men  ought  to  be  healthly  em- 
bodiments of  virile  masculinity  under  control  and 
yearning  femininity  also  under  intelligent  con- 
trol. What  they  know  must  be  anchored  deep  in 
strong  motives  to  hold  them  chivalrous  and 
chaste.  It  is  the  first  business  of  parent-teachers 
and  teacher-parents  to  find  this  anchorage  and 
fasten  knowledge  there.  Efficiency  begins  there 
and    ends    there — not    in    scientific    knowledge. 


The  Parent-Community      *  121 

American  civilization  not  less  than  European  civ- 
ilization and  world  social  order  is  at  stake  in  the 
outcome  of  sex  education  in  physical  and  moral 
parenthood. 

SUMMARY 

The  eternal  triangle  of  the  race  is  one  man,  one 
woman,  and  the  child.  Physical  parenthood 
brings  man  in  closer  cooperation  with  the  Creator 
than  any  other  physical  act.  Moral  parenthood 
brings  man  in  closer  cooperation  with  the  Creator 
than  any  other  spiritual  conduct.  Parenthood  is 
at  once  the  highest  realization  of  individual  ex- 
perience and  the  fundamental  social  fact :  all  that 
lies  behind  it  culminates  in  it;  all  that  follows, 
racially  and  socially,  depends  upon  it. 

Communities  in  which  babies  are  infrequent 
and  unpopular  are  already  smitten  with  fatal 
blight.  Community  welfare  must  begin  with 
exaltation  of  parenthood  and  conservation  of 
childhood.  For  herein  is  the  one  only  stream  of 
human  reality:  infants  becoming  children,  chil- 
dren becoming  youths,  and  youths  becoming  par- 
ents. 

Right  ideals  of  marriage  and  of  the  marriage 
relation  are  essential  to  fine  family  life.  Wrong 
ideas  of  marriage  and  false  ideals  of  the  marriage 
relation  destroy  individual  happiness,  disrupt 
homes,  destroy  community  spirit,  imperil  the 
state  and  civilization.  Communities  made  up  of 
happy  homes  and  friendly  families  are  most  blest, 


122     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

the  only  abiding  foundation  of  a  righteous  society 
and  a  brotherly  humanity. 

A  religious  view  of  the  human  body  is  essential 
to  intelligent  religion,  to  individual  and  social 
self-control.  Social  vices  cannot  live  in  its  pres- 
ence, they  flourish  in  its  absence.  Where  this 
view  is  lost  from  sight,  God  is  commonly  super- 
fluous to  daily  life  and  social  intercourse  and  is 
decorously  dismissed  to  the  soft  lights,  soft 
music,  and  soft  worship  of  Sundays.  Where  this 
view  is  uppermost  God  is  glorified  by  men  hold- 
ing him  in  their  knowledge. 

Community  recognition  of  the  dignity  of  phys- 
ical and  moral  parenthood  is  needed  to  stop  the 
consequences  of  prostitution,  venereal  diseases, 
and  all  other  elements  of  racial  and  social  degen- 
eration. The  moral  parenthood  of  the  whole 
community  includes  wider  responsibility  than 
supplying  school-teachers.  It  covers  the  entire 
physical  and  mental,  spiritual  and  social  well- 
being  of  all  the  community's  children. 

Sex  education  is  essential  to  the  "self-knowl- 
edge, self-reverence,  and  self-control"  which  lead 
life  on  to  sovereign  power.  As  a  parental  priv- 
ilege it  is  priceless ;  as  a  delegated  duty  to  teach- 
ers or  others  it  is  of  doubtful  value.  Commu- 
nity sentiment  has  no  more  urgent  field  of  duty 
than  the  formulation  of  definite  plans  for  this 
work  to  be  wisely  done. 


CHAPTER  Vn 

The  Religious  Community 

The  Community  Problem 

"Leave  religion  out."  "Don't  try  to  do  any- 
thing with  the  Churches."  "Keep  out  of  trouble ; 
stick  to  commercial  and  general  conditions." 
These  are  the  invariable  comments  of  commer- 
cial promoters  and  of  local  commercial  interests 
whenever  a  program  of  community  welfare  dis- 
cussions is  proposed.  "By  all  means  come  in  and 
help  us,"  is  the  almost  invariable  request  of  local 
religious  leaders.  "If  you  can  do  anything  to  help 
us  get  a  grip  on  the  life  of  the  community,  that  is 
what  we  want  above  all  things,"  declare  all 
thoughtful  churchmen.  "Religion  has  done  more 
than  any  other  force  in  history  to  retard  social 
progress  and  prevent  social  integration,"  declare 
many  of  the  leading  students  of  social  life.  "Re- 
ligion is  the  only  possible  basis  on  which  society 
can  safely  be  constructed  or  reconstructed,"  de- 
clare all  religious  leaders.  In  the  midst  of  these 
conflicting  claims  and  pleas,  policy  always  sug- 
gests the  coward's  path,  "When  in  doubt,  do 
nothing ;  let  someone  else  do  it." 

Long  before  the  outbreak  of  the  European 
war  far-seeing  men  claimed  to  foresee  the  pass- 

123 


124     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

ing  of  Protestantism  and  the  coming  in  of  a  new 
religious  Catholicism.  The  war  postponed  but 
did  not  stop  the  serious  effort  to  bring  about  a 
world  conference  on  faith  and  order,  looking  to 
an  organic  union  of  Churches  and  a  visible  re- 
union of  Christians  of  even  the  most  diverse 
sects.  Other  efforts  equally  daring  in  their  vi- 
sions and  plans  were  under  way. 

The  daze  of  the  war  is  still  on.  The  spectacle 
of  Christian  nations  combing  the  continents  for 
heathen  to  help  them  butcher  each  other,  all  of 
them  crowding  the  Jews  to  the  fore  or  trampling 
them  with  incredible  fury  under  foot;  with  mil- 
lions of  Church  members  joining  the  non-Church 
population  of  America  in  an  unofficial  but  effect- 
ive churchlessness,  such  as  France  tried  officially 
a  century  ago;  with  the  world  never  so  full  of 
religious  aspiration  and  never  so  little  of  it  con- 
trolled by  the  Church,  as  President  Fitch  of 
Andover  declared  to  the  Ministerial  Union  of 
Chicago ;  with  religious  conditions  in  country  and 
city  challenging  the  best  statesmanship  of  all  the 
religious  leaders  in  the  land — with  world  condi- 
tions as  they  are,  national  life  as  it  is  and  com- 
munities as  they  are,  if  ever  in  the  history  of 
mankind  the  Christian  faith  had  a  constructive 
message  for  practical  immediate  application,  its 
moment  has  come.  And  for  once  there  is  general 
agreement  that  the  religious  problem  is  not  to  be 
solved  by  bringing  the  top  branches  together  but 


The  Religious  Community  125 

by  working  at  the  root — community  appropria- 
tion and  expression  of  the  message  of  reUgion. 

But  at  once  a  series  of  questions  arises  which 
the  aggregate  and  local  Churches  have  not  been 
trying  to  answer  clearly,  and  it  looks  as  if  abso- 
lutely nothing  could  be  accomplished  till  all 
hands  get  back  to  the  beginnings  of  things  and 
answer  root  questions  first.  What  is  religion? 
What  is  Church?  What  is  the  difference  be- 
tween religions?  What  are  the  differences  be- 
tween Churches?  Is  there  a  common  factor  in 
the  Jewish,  Roman  Catholic,  and  multitudinous 
Christian  faiths  and  fellowships?  If  the  three 
sons  of  Lazarus  and  Sara  Straus,  Isador,  Nathan, 
and  Oscar,  were,  until  the  "Titanic"  carried  Isa- 
dor down,  the  most  conspicuously  patriotic,  pub- 
lic-spirited, and  practically  religious  family  of 
brothers  in  America,  why  do  Christian  nations 
persecute  the  Jews  and  why  does  sectarian  preju- 
dice sway  the  minds  of  so  many  Americans?  If 
Father  O'Callahan,  Rabbi  Hirsh,  and  representa- 
tives of  all  Protestant  sects  could  work  alongside 
Charles  R.  Henderson  in  his  life  and  weep  to- 
gether in  common  grief  at  his  bier,  why  canndl 
all  fathers,  and  rabbis  and  reverends  and  common 
Christians  work  in  common  joy  and  weep  in 
common  sorrow?  If  the  child  of  the  Jewish  mer- 
chant is  sick  and  the  wife  of  a  Methodist  minister 
nurses  the  little  lass,  and  the  Presbyterian  min- 
ister meets  the  priest,  as  they  two  happen  to 


126     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

call  upon  the  distressed  father,  and  they  join  in 
expressing  sincere  human  sympathy,  why  can't 
they  all  keep  it  up  when  the  girl  gets  well  ? 

To  the  last  of  these  questions  there  is  but  one 
honest  answer — they  are  kept  apart  by  abstract 
tions.  The  speculative  element  of  religion  has 
played  such  an  exclusive  part,  while  the  world 
has  been  mostly  given  up  to  abstractions,  ths* 
the  concrete  human  element  has  been  almost  lost 
to  sight.  Theories  about  what  happens  to  dead 
folk,  and  how  and  why,  have  split  humanity  into 
jangling  and  discordant  classes,  while  bald  facts 
about  what  happens  to  live  folk,  patent  outstand- 
ing and  terrible  human  facts  have  been  pushed 
aside.  If, the  religious  problem  is  actually  to  be 
worked  out  in  communities,  rather  than  in  con- 
claves and  assemblies  and  seminaries,  then,  clearly 
enough,  the  h^nan  element  and  not  the  specula- 
tive element  m^t  play  the  dominant  part  in  the 
solution.  Eo^ommon  citizens  are  moved  by  com- 
mon sympMJPes  and  not  by  deep  philosophical 
reasonings  or  dogmatic  affirmations.  The  com- 
D^n  loves  and  hates,  common  hopes  and  despairs, 
I^Bnmon  joys  and  sorrows  of  common  citizens 
make  up  the  factors  of  the  solution.  Not  "The 
Man  in  the  Streets"  whom  Richard  Roberts 
exalts  in  "The  Renaissance  of  Faith,"  not  the  ab- 
stract Average  Citizen,  but  the  actual  men  and 
women,  youths  and  children,  as  they  are  at  their 
best  and  worst  in  daily  life,  are  the  human  fac- 


The  Religious  C ommunity  127 

tors  to  be  considered.  What  is  religion  to  them? 
What  is  Church  to  them?  What  are  the  dif- 
ferences between  them  when  they  are  simply 
trying  the  best  they  know  to  be  religious?  Since 
they  themselves  are  the  Church,  the  only  con- 
crete Church  there  is  in  all  the  world  for  them, 
their  habitual  attitudes  toward  God  and  their 
actions  toward  each  other  built  into  their  daily 
conduct,  why  cannot  they  be  as  close  kin  in 
health  as  in  sickness,  in  joy  as  in  sorrow,  as 
neighbors  in  daily  contact  and  intercourse,  even 
if  they  do  worship  God  differently?  Or  is  it  the 
same  God  they  worship?  Do  they  actually  have 
the  same  God?  Do  any  two  persons  on  earth 
conceive  God  precisely  alike?  And  must  each 
person,  to  be  true  to  himself,  worship  the  best 
God  he  can  conceive?  If  they  do  think  differ- 
ently of  God,  will  they  help  themselves  or  each 
other  or  any  God  they  have  by  wrangling  and 
quarreling  and  being  unneighborly?  Keep  close 
to  human  facts  in  facing  such  questions.  If  the 
Creator  intended  people  to  be  all  alike  in  their 
emotions  and  thoughts  and  actions  he  could  mo^e 
easily — humanly  speaking — have  made  each  p^^ 
son  an  exact  duplicate  of  all  other  persons,  everyW 
body  loving  alike  and  hating  alike,  thinking  alike 
and  acting  alike — but  he  did  not  make  any  two 
persons  duplicates,  gave  to  no  two  of  them  the 
same  quantity  or  quality  of  brains  or  the  same 
quantity  or  quality  of  tissues  by  which  to  exer- 


128     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

cise  the  brains.  We're  here.  We  are  close  by 
each  other.  Geographically  we  are  neighbors. 
Why  not  treat  each  other  as  equally  privileged  to 
have  a  square  deal  from  all  the  rest?  In  the  very 
nature  of  human  physical  organisms  agreement 
in  the  speculative  elements  of  religion  is  hope- 
lessly impossible.  Why  not  try  to  work  out 
agreements  in  the  region  of  concrete  human  ele- 
ments where  agreement  is  not  only  possible  but 
demonstrated  spontaneously  every  time  human 
sympathies  are  put  squarely  to  the  test? 

Those  who  dearly  love  to  philosophize,  clum- 
sily or  clearly,  would  dearly  love  to  point  out 
innumerable  flaws  and  weaknesses  in  a  program 
so  humanly  simple.  A  religion  which  has  no 
philosophy  could  not  be,  of  course,  in  a  world  of 
reasoning  creatures.  But  philosophy  is  not  reli- 
gion. Dr.  James  Denny  long  ago  pointed  out  the 
fact  that  men  needlessly  multiply  difficulties  for 
themselves  by  imagining  that  there  are  many 
religious  difficulties  when  in  fact  there  are  not. 
There  are  very  many  practical  perplexities,  many 
scientific  skepticisms  and  a  world  full  of  philo- 
|K)phical  difficulties — there  is  only  one  religious 
difficulty,  the  simple  human  problem  of  being 
religious.  Now  if  citizens  in  each  community 
come  to  think  of  each  other  and  to  treat  each 
other  as  common  human  beings,  all  of  them  to- 
gether faced  by  the  one  difficulty  of  being  simply 
and  humanly  religious,  of  living  out  in  daily 


The  Religious  Community  129 

intercourse  as  much  as  each  one  knows  of  God 
and  human  duty,  who  shall  say  that  immense 
practical  steps  are  not  being  taken  to  solve  the 
problem  of  the  world's  religious  chaos? 

Fasten  the  problem  of  religion  to  the  one 
changeless  stream  of  human  reality  to  be  found 
in  every  community,  and  note  the  startling  re- 
sults which  are  at  once  apparent.  Take  the 
extremes — a  heathen  baby  and  a  Christian  baby ! 
As  a  human  fact  there  is  not  now,  never  has 
been,  and  never  will  be  such  a  thing  as  a  heathen 
baby :  its  parents  may  be  steeped  in  the  traditions 
and  customs  of  heathenism  but  the  baby  is  not, 
it  is  only — baby;  and  the  same  influences  which 
will  make  the  offspring  of  Christian  parents 
Christian  will  make  the  child  of  heathen  parents 
Christian.  The  whole  modern  missionary  enter- 
prise is  built  on  this  truth.  The  whole  of  reli- 
gious instruction  and  Christian  education  will  be 
built,  sooner  or  later,  on  the  corresponding  truth 
that  the  same  influences  which  make  heathen  the 
child  of  heathen  parents  will  make  heathen  the 
child  of  Christian  parents;  for  heathenism  is  a 
matter  of  influences,  not  of  latitude  or  of  longi- 
tude. Carry  the  same  kind  of  process  out  in 
another  direction — ^who  ever  heard  of  Roman 
Catholic  infancy,  Anglican  childhood,  or  Protes- 
tant adolescence?  The  description,  Jew,  might 
be  used  because  that  implies  racial  as  well  as 
religious  marks.    But  the  other  adjectives  simply 


130     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

do  not  fit  and  cannot  be  made  to  fit — they  repre- 
sent distinctions  among  adults  who  are  classified 
by  the  sets  of  abstractions  to  which  they  sub- 
scribe, and  they  apply  to  infants  and  chil- 
dren and  youths  only  as  grown  folk  undertake  to 
shape  the  habits  of  thought  and  conduct  of 
youngsters  away  from  concrete  realities  and 
toward  speculative  abstractions. 

Insistence  upon  sticking  to  human  realities 
sounds  revolutionary.  It  is.  It  will  absolutely 
reconstruct  the  whole  basis  of  religion  in  com- 
munities, the  nation,  and  the  world.  But  the 
revolutionary  elements  of  the  plan  are  not  at  all 
modern.  On  the  contrary  they  were  the  religion 
lived  by,  and  constitute  the  foundation  laid  by, 
the  Founder  of  the  Christian  faith  and  fellowship. 
They  sound  ominous  to  modern  ears  only  where 
the  Church  has  lost  its  Lord.  What  other  thing, 
for  example,  did  He  do  than  precisely  this,  when 
he  gathered  up  the  bitterest  of  all  prejudices  of 
race  and  of  religion,  including  in  their  scope  all 
lesser  prejudices,  when  the  law  of  eternal  life 
was  illustrated  for  all  time  by  the  classic  human 
sympathizer,  the  Good  Samaritan — ^the  character 
so  honored  in  preaching  and  so  dishonored  in 
practice ! 

Or  take  His  still  more  explicit  teaching.  Vis- 
ualize the  scene  portrayed  by  Matthew  18:1-14, 
and  put  that  series  of  affirmations  down  on  any 
page  of  Church  history  between  then  and  now: 


The  Religious  Community  131 

with  a  boy  in  his  arms  the  Teacher  turns  upon 
his  politically  ambitious  companions  and  utters 
such  revolutionary  sayings  that  if  the  Churches 
have  heard  them  they  have  neither  cared  nor 
dared  to  heed  them :  "Except  you — grown  men — 
become  like  this  little  boy,  ye  shall  in  no  wise 
enter  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven."  We  and  our 
fathers  have  been  telling  boys  during  the  cen- 
turies that  except  they  behave  like  nice  old  men 
they  can  in  no  wise  go  to  heaven.  He  put  the 
child  in  the  midst  of  attention  and  effort :  we  and 
our  fathers  have  put  almost  every  other  conceiv- 
able thing  in  the  midst  and  have  put  the  child  in 
almost  every  other  conceivable  place — in  the 
basement  or  in  outer  darkness  only  so  they  might 
be  seen  occasionally  and  not  heard.  He  charged 
straightly  that  men  should  despise  not  one  of 
these  little  ones:  we  and  our  women  folk  have 
treated  them  with  unspeakable  contempt, 
crowned  now  by  the  general  clamor  that  all  girls 
shall  be  taught  the  use  of  contraceptives  to  set 
farther  on  the  purposes  of  abortion  and  infanti- 
cide; we  have  regularly  given  more  expert  care 
to  calves  and  colts  and  crops  than  to  these  little 
ones.  He  declares  it  is  not  the  will  of  the  Father 
that  one  of  these  little  ones  should  perish:  we 
and  our  fathers  have  made  it  almost  impossible 
for  uncounted  millions  of  them  to  do  anything 
else  but  perish,  physically,  mentally,  morally, 
socially — we  unconcernedly  let  them  die  when 

(10) 


132     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

we  do  not  actually  compel  them  to  perish.  Now 
grant  the  possibility  that,  in  spite  of  our  philoso- 
phies, there  is  a  continuous  Personality,  an  affec- 
tionate Mind  like  Him  in  the  universe — and  what 
other  fate  could  overcome  a  Church  which  em- 
bodies a  mind  like  our  practice  and  past  history 
show?  He  founded  the  faith  and  fellowship  on 
Reality.  Through  the  centuries  we  have  chosen 
to  go  groping  through  unrealities  crying  Lo, 
here !  and  Lo,  there !  He  declared  that,  "whoever 
receiveth  one  such  child  in  my  name  receives 
me." 

Dean  Shailer  Mathews  showed,  in  the  first 
issue  of  the  Constructive  Quarterly,  that  the  reli- 
gious problems  of  the  present  day  are  not  those 
of  the  Reformation.  They  reach  back  to  the  first 
days  and  raise  once  more  the  question,  if  there  is 
vitality  and  vigor  in  Christian  faith  and  fellow- 
ship to  take  men  of  divers  minds  and  make  a  com- 
munity of  them,  a  fellowship  in  fact,  a  brotherli- 
ness  based  on  the  common  fatherliness  of  the 
head  of  the  community? 

All  this  sounds  alien  and  foreign  to  many 
Protestants — but  it  is  far  more  familiar  than  most 
Protestants  have  realized.  Who  is  the  one  great 
hero  of  modern  crusading  for  religious  commit- 
ments? Billy  Sunday.  There  is  none  other  like 
him.  Strange,  isn't  it,  that  while  he  has  been 
criticised  from  almost  every  standpoint,  most  of 
his  critics  should  have  overlooked  the  real  secret 


The  Religious  Community  133 

of  his  success,  his  ruthless  upsetting  of  all  the 
cherished  "distinctive  messages"  of  Protestant 
parties.  Billy  Sunday  commands  complete  sup- 
pression of  all  divisive  notions  and  practices,  ab- 
solutely impartial  cooperation  of  all  Church 
workers  for  months  before  he  comes — systematic 
cooperation  without  distinctions  under  expert 
non-denominational  organizers  and  leaders.  When 
he  comes  he  lashes  all  parties  with  equal  energy, 
holding  up  to  open  derision  and  contempt  the 
divisiveness  which  has  been  the  glory  of  Protes- 
tant churches,  while  he  preaches  a  theology  which 
few  or  none  of  them  actually  believe.  He  would 
have  been  burned  at  the  stake,  not  so  long  ago, 
by  devout  churchmen.  But  the  Protestantism 
that  was  is  not  going — it  has  gone  beyond  recov- 
ery, and  religious  leaders  are  hunting  for  the  right 
thing  to  put  in  its  place. 

Past  centuries  are  much  farther  away  than 
indicated  by  calendars.  Let  Philip  S  chaff  tersely 
tell  the  story. 

In  the  seventeenth  century  the  Romanists  ex- 
cluded the  Protestants,  the  Lutherans  the  Cal- 
vinists,  the  Calvinists  the  Arminians,  from  the 
kingdom  of  heaven;  how  much  more  all  those 
who  never  heard  of  Christ.  This  wholesale  dam- 
nation of  the  vast  majority  of  the  human  race 
should  have  stirred  up  a  burning  zeal  for  their 
conversion;  and  yet  during  that  whole  period  of 
intense  confessionalism  and  rigid  orthodoxism 
there  was  not  a  single  Protestant  missionary  in 


134     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

the  field  except  among  the  Indians  in  the  wilder- 
ness of  North  America. 

That  sort  of  religion  had  gone  in  America  long 
before  religion  itself  began  to  be  torpedoed  and 
shelled  from  the  clouds  and  be  smothered  in 
liquid  gas  and  die  in  awful  anguish,  in  Europe. 

Let  men  not  deceive  themselves,  religion  has 
been  smashed — not  merely  art  glass  and  cathedral 
chimes.  If  religion  has  no  clear-cut  message 
for  this  day — a  plainer  message  than  the  past  has 
brought — serious  men  will  be  driven  toward 
atheism. 

A  God  of  almost  any  sort  and  one  man  can 
make  a  religion.  It  takes  a  God  of  a  particular 
sort  and  at  least  two  men  to  make  the  Christian 
religion:  a  God  whose  affectionate  authority  is 
expressed  by  his  fatherliness  and  whose  worship 
is  human  brotherliness.  That  religion  is  as  sim- 
ple and  winsome  as  the  daily  life  of  Jesus  Christ, 
and  men  in  all  the  sixty-three  generations  be- 
tween then  and  now  have  proved  it  to  be  so.  The 
religion  is  at  once  a  trustful  confidence  in  the 
Father  and  helpful  friendliness  between  the 
Father's  children,  a  faith  and  a  fellowship.  Men 
do  not  have  to  be  profound  philosophers  to  un- 
derstand it,  but  simple  human  beings  living  it. 
The  very  simplicity  of  it  baffled  men  in  the  first 
generation  when  it  was  set  to  work,  and  it  baffles 
the  same  kind  of  men  now.  For  example,  Greek 
logic  gave  the  faith  an  intellectual  framework 


The  Religious  Community  135 

and  Roman  authority  gave  the  fellowship  a  me- 
chanical framework,  and  from  then  till  now  men 
who  have  learned  to  think  only  in  terms  of  phi- 
losophy or  politics  have  insisted  in  shoving  either 
one  or  both  of  the  frameworks  into  first  place 
regardless  of  the  life  in  the  faith  and  the  love  in 
the  fellowship  which  lay  back  of  both  of  them. 
Most  of  the  plain  folk  never  have  understood, 
and  do  not  care  now  what  all  the  pother  of  dog- 
mensgeschichte  and  ecclesiastical  politics  is 
about.  Given  half  a  chance  to  work  the  thing 
out  without  interference  and  common  citizens 
could  quickly  find  the  faith  and  fellowship  a  very 
practical  and  workable  program  of  cultivating 
neighborly  spirit  with  each  other.  If  they  cannot 
be  free  from  interference  by  rigid  logicians  and 
intense  institutionalists  they  solve  the  problem 
in  a  crude  but  effective  way,  ignoring  churches 
and  being  religious  the  best  they  know  how  out- 
side of  all  organized  societies.  They  have  done 
that,  they  are  doing  that  by  wholesale  to  the 
utter  distraction  of  formal  religionists,  and  it 
looks  very  much  as  if  they  would  continue  to 
foster  religious  aspirations  uncontrolled  by  either 
logic  or  power.  It  is  all  very  distracting  to  those 
who  have  put  institutional  loyalty  ahead  of  hu- 
man companionship  and  the  common  interests  of 
neighbors.  But  it  looks  like  the  true  human  way 
of  finding  a  common  sentiment  of  highest  values, 


136     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

and  this,  as  Professor  King  shows,  is  religion 
looked  at  from  the  social  viewpoint. 

The  consternation  of  those  who  think  of  reli- 
gion only  as  church  is  not  yet  complete.  Thought- 
ful citizens,  both  inside  and  outside  of  churches, 
have  been  taught  in  great  numbers  to  think  of 
religion  and  religious  relations  in  terms  of  family 
life  rather  than  of  the  law  court  or  deductive 
logic.  The  idea  of  organizing  a  family  with  an 
outfit  of  political  officials,  of  calling  a  family  into 
formal  session  and  electing  a  father,  an  older 
brother,  a  serving  mother  or  sister,  "all  of  whom 
shall  serve  until  their  successors  are  elected  and 
duly  installed" — why  the  whole  thing  looks 
farcical  and  absurd.  Those  who  are  looking 
toward  an  organic  union  of  the  Christian  family 
are  bound  to  find  a  world  full  of  non-conformists. 
Those  who  are  looking  for  agreement  on  formal 
statements  of  articles  of  faith  will  also  meet  non- 
conformists in  crowds  till  the  Creator  changes 
his  plan  of  outfitting  human  creatures  with 
diverse  thinking  powers.  Those  who  are  looking 
for  actual  agreement  among  citizens  of  helping 
each  other,  in  all  possible  ways,  to  be  as  religious 
in  daily  life  as  each  one's  own  highest  aspirations 
and  the  contagion  of  personality  can  produce — 
why  these  are  already  finding  the  ground  ready 
at  hand,  fertile  and  fallow,  in  every  city  ward  and 
country  district  in  America. 


The  Religious  Community  137 

As  a  matter  of  very  candid  and  very  unpleasant 
fact,  there  is  a  widespread  and  growing  convic- 
tion that  churches  have  been  dabbling  in  so  many 
things  that  have  nothing  whatever  to  do  with 
religion,  especially  as  Jesus  lived  it,  that  the  very 
heart  and  essence  of  religion  has  been  left  largely 
to  go  unguided  and  uncontrolled  by  the  organized 
bodies  of  religion.  Now  in  focusing  the  power  of 
religion  on  personal  well-being  and  community 
welfare,  a  simple  and  practicable  "departure  for  a 
new  beginning"  is  made  in  a  way  that  citizens  can 
understand,  support,  share  and  profit  by.  It  looks 
like  a  breaking  up  of  the  foundations  of  the  great 
deep  to  trained  theologians — but  if  they  only  com- 
prehended the  simple  theology  of  merchants  and 
farmers  and  housewives  and  young  folk  their 
logical  anguish  would  be  tempered  by  vast  hu- 
man sympathy  and  they  might  not  be  so  sensi- 
tive about  the  church's  leadership  up  in  the 
clouds.  Uncompromising  churchmen,  too,  when 
once  they  get  close  to  the  folk  who  pay  the  bills, 
might  say  with  Cromwell: 

"The  time  is  ripe,  and  rotten-ripe,  for  change; 
Then  let  it  come:    I  have  no  dread  of  what 
Is  called  for  by  the  instinct  of  mankind. 
Nor  think  I  that  God's  world  will  fall  apart 

,  Because  we  tear  a  parchment  more  or  less.'* 


138     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

COMMUNITY    RELIGION    AND     COMMUNITY 
CHURCHES 

All  over  America  a  healthy  movement  is  under 
way  to  merge  or  federate  or  unite  all  local  con- 
gregations into  one  church  for  the  community. 
Overchurched  villages  and  towns  along  with  un- 
derchurched  cities  and  rural  districts  had  come 
to  be  an  intolerable  scandal,  inexcusable  even  by 
the  aggressive  secretaries  who  caused  much  of 
it.  After  nine  years  of  agitation  the  Laymen's 
Missionary  Movement  succeeded  in  getting  sev- 
enty-five paid  denominational  officials  to  come 
together  and  take  counsel  on  the  dire  situation 
of  the  nation  in  1915.  The  Commission  on  the 
Rural  Church  and  Country  Life,  of  the  Federal 
Council  of  Churches  of  Christ  in  America,  has 
brought  about  such  agitation  and  crystallized 
sentiment  that  the  conservatism  of  the.  Federal 
Council  leaders  plainly  cannot  long  withstand  an 
open  and  direct  appeal  for  church  union  in  behalf 
of  community  religion.  The  next  decade  prom- 
ises to  be  one  of  unparalleled  changes  in  Church 
life  in  America.  A  demand  is  almost  invariably 
voiced,  when  citizens  are  called  to  confer  in  mass 
assembly  on  the  religious  welfare  of  the  com- 
munity, for  a  united  Church  for  the  whole  com- 
munity and  provision  for  unified  worship  and 
work  by  religious  citizens.  Obstacles  which  seem 
insuperable   hold   back   the   realization   of   this 


The  Religious  Community  139 

dream  in  most  cities  and  towns.  But  meanwhile 
another  very  practical  step  is  open  and  possible. 

Local  churches  need  not  violently  cut  the  ties 
of  venerated  traditions  and  prized  fellowships  in 
order  to  turn  their  attention  away  from  Church 
to  community  as  the  immediate  object  of  effort. 
Doctrinal  and  organic  uniformity  is  not  at  all  a 
condition  of  making  the  Church  an  agency  for 
the  furthering  of  the  well-being  of  all  persons  in 
the  parish  and  the  promotion  of  community  wel- 
fare. Indeed  it  is  easily  possible  for  a  Church  to 
be  the  only  organized  religious  body  in  a  com- 
munity and  still  not  be,  in  any  true  sense  of  the 
term,  a  community  Church.  A  Church  which 
lives  for  itself,  for  its  own  upbuilding  and 
strengthening  for  its  own  welfare  and  party  ends, 
is  not,  and  cannot  possibly  be,  a  community 
Church.  The  very  expression  implies  rightly 
that  the  Church  lives  for  the  community,  for  the 
upbuilding  and  strengthening  of  the  community 
in  all  moral  and  material  ends,  for  the  welfare 
of  the  whole  community. 

An  Ohio  Church  of  this  sort  illustrates  the 
point.  In  a  territory  of  about  one  hundred  and 
eighty  square  miles,  twenty-nine  churches  have 
been  started  and  died.  The  one  Church  survives. 
In  its  membership  are  representatives  of  eleven 
different  communions.  One  denominational  ser- 
mon would  wreck  it,  although  it  maintains  de- 
nominational relations  in  good  standing.    It  lives 


140     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

for  the  vital  interests  of  the  whole  big  parish. 
Several  members  of  resident  Roman  Catholic 
families  avail  themselves  of  many  of  its  activities. 
The  spirit  of  social  responsibility  and  community 
welfare  has  been  carefully  cultivated  during  most 
of  the  past  decade.  Sixty  miles  west  of  Chicago 
is  another  Church  of  similar  life,  but  with  differ- 
ent past  history.  Here,  too,  Roman  Catholic  cit- 
izens share  in  many  of  the  public  enterprises 
fostered  by  the  community  Church.  Very  many 
such  churches  sprang  up  in  the  Canadian  north- 
west, during  the  period  of  negotiation  looking  to 
the  union  of  several  Protestant  bodies  in  the  do- 
minion, and  those  community  churches  now  de- 
cline to  become  identified  with  any  of  the  still 
separate  bodies.  In  many  states  there  are  an 
increasing  number  of  such  churches,  fostered 
almost  universally  by  the  representatives  of  agri- 
cultural colleges,  most  of  which  are  more  reli- 
gious in  practical  matters  than  some  theological 
seminaries.  In  towns  and  cities  where  churches 
are  already  working,  the  supreme  need  is  that  all 
of  them  shall  be  imbued  with  the  community 
spirit,  work  together  in  absolute  harmony  and 
unselfishness  in  all  •  matters  of  public  concern, 
and  let  the  one  which  serves  most  be  greatest  of 
all.  This  life  of  serving  and  not  being  served  is 
practical,  it  makes  live  worship  live,  and  brings 
full  blessings  of  the  living  God.  Where  local 
churches  work  thus  together  their  ministers  and 


The  Religious  Community  141 

leading  minds  will  be  in  frequent  conference  on 
community  affairs,  each  group  being  free  to  do 
its  work  in  harmony  with  its  own  polity  and  disci- 
pline. The  life  of  the  community  and  its  mem- 
bers is  the  true  point  of  Church  attack.  And  none 
need  fear  that  this  but  substitutes  a  community 
selfishness  for  the  smaller  one  of  party  groups. 
If  men  once  learn  how  honestly  to  love  their  hu- 
man brothers  whom  they  see  there  may  be  larger 
chance  for  them  to  know  real  love  of  God  whom 
they  have  not  seen.  Loveless  and  unloving  self- 
ishness might  make  a  religion  fit  for  dead  folk, 
but  not  for  those  Christ  died  to  save. 

SOCIAL  SERVICE  AND  MISSIONS 

The  missionary  enterprise  kept  the  Church 
alive  during  the  past  century.  A  stranger  enter- 
ing a  town  can  tell  without  asking  a  question  if 
the  local  churches  are  full  of  missionary  passion 
or  if  church-membership  and  help-to-pay-ex- 
penses is  all  they  have  to  offer  the  community. 
For  missions  and  social  service  go  always  hand 
in  hand.  They  cannot  be  kept  apart  because  they 
are  two  sides  of  the  self-same  thing.  Missions  is 
only  social  service  which  someone  else  is  sent  to 
do:  social  service  is  missions  done  first-hand. 
Missions  is  social  service  by  proxy :  social  service 
is  missions  personally  performed.  Missions  is 
a  zeal  for  humanity  expressed  with  cash:  social 
service  is  an  enthusiasm  for  humanity  expressed 


142     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

through  hands  and  feet  and  tongues.  Love  for 
the  children  of  men  is  the  motive  power  in  both. 
When  missionaries  began  to  come  back  from 
alien  lands  and  told  simple  stories  of  appalling 
human  needs,  of  infants  exposed  and  sacrificed 
by  ignorance,  of  awful  treatment  of  women  in 
confinement,  of  helpless  child  wives  and  more 
wretched  child  widows,  of  incantations  and 
weird  treatments  of  the  sick,  of  filthy  homes  and 
stinking  towns  and  city  streets,  of  children  who 
did  not  know  how  to  laugh  but  had  to  be  taught, 
^-of  all  the  injustices  and  inequalities  and  inhu- 
manities, the  spirit  of  compassion  was  born  in 
many  hearts.  But  compassion  for  creatures  on 
the  other  side  of  the  world  cannot  be  held  there — 
being  compassion  it  is  bound  to  be  more  alive 
to  human  need  across  the  alley  than  that  across 
the  seas,  more  eager  to  help  concrete  cases  which 
can  be  seen  with  one's  own  eyes  than  those  which 
have  to  be  seen  through  others'  eyes.  So  it  comes 
about  that  wherever  the  missionary  passion  pos- 
sesses any  Church  group  the  lively  human  com- 
passion becomes  a  restless  agitator  for  the  fullest 
possible  chance  at  health,  happiness,  and  a  useful 
life  by  every  baby,  boy,  girl,  youthful  man  and 
maid  in  the  whole  community.  Churches  devoid 
of  missionary  and  social  service  passion  are  sure 
to  need  paint — and  several  other  things — to  make 
them  sweet  and  wholesome.  Missions  let  the 
Church  get  out  of  the  meetinghouse  to  go  abroad : 


The  Religious  Community  143 

social  service  coaxes  the  Church  to  come  out  of 
doors,  where  all  the  folks  are,  to  live  with  them, 
share  life  and  love  with  them,  and  help  to  be 
their  own  answer  to  the  prayer  they  all  pray, 

"Our  Father,  who  art  in  heaven. 
Hallowed  be  thy  name. 
Thy  kingdom  come. 
Thy  will  be  done. 
As  in  heaven,  so  on  earth. — " 

It  seems  more  like  a  long  forgotten  century 
than  less  than  three  decades  when  men  literally 
took  their  Church  lives  in  their  hands  as  they 
lifted  up  clear  voices  with  a  social  message  to 
the  churches.  So  long  had  religion  been  identified 
either  with  folk  long  dead  or  with  those  who 
shortly  would  be  for  long  time  dead,  that  men 
woke  with  a  resentful  start  to  the  old  challenge 
that  "God  is  not  the  God  of  the  dead,  but  of  the 
livmg,"  and  that  the  churches'  supreme  mission 
is  to  all  the  little  ones,  for  whom  "it  is  not  the 
will  of  the  Father  that  one  of  them  should  per- 
ish." No  wildest  dreamer  dare  indulge  himself 
the  privilege  of  trying  to  imagine  what  this 
planet  will  be  like  when  the  whole  tremendous 
energy  of  religious  power  shall  be  withdrawn 
from  dress  performances  and  centered  on  the 
well-being  of  all  the  babies  and  little  children  and 
budding,  blossoming  youths,  and  parents.  But  if 
it  starts  in  this  community  and  that  one  and 
then  others,   all   vying  with  each  other  as  to 


144     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

which  is  the  best  community  in  each  state  and 
nation  in  which  to  rear  healthy,  wholesome  citi- 
zens for  the  community  and  the  world — why  not ! 

RELIGIOUS    INSTRUCTION   AND    CHRISTIAN 
EDUCATION 

Because  it  has  been  so  engrossed  in  the  con- 
version of  adults  and  the  perpetuation  of  abstract 
frameworks  of  all  sects,  the  simplicity  of  the 
work  and  the  bigness  of  the  real  task  of  making 
a  righteous  society  has  been  almost  wholly  over- 
looked. 

A  righteous  society  can  be  made  only  where 
society  is  in  the  process  of  making,  which  hap- 
pens to  coincide  with  the  place  in  human  growth 
and  development  where  tendencies  to  conduct 
are  being  formed — the  second  twelve-year  period 
of  human  life.  If  society  is  ever  to  be  righteous, 
right  tendencies  to  conduct  must  be  built  into 
lives  who  are  just  then  choosing  and  fixing  ten- 
dencies. In  other  words,  ever  since  the  child 
was  put  out  of  the  midst  of  religious  interest 
and  attention,  Churches  have  been  kept  up  by 
adults  for  the  benefit  of  adults  and  their  prep- 
aration for  glory  after  while.  Jewish  faith  and 
fellowship  were  anchored  at  the  start  in  reli- 
gious instruction  of  children.  The  Jewish  com- 
munity through  ninety  tragic  generations  has 
been  grounded  in  parenthood  and  childhood.  The 
Roman    Catholic    communion    also    has    been. 


The  Religious  Community  145 

through  many  centuries,  perpetuated  by  building 
the  Church  into  the  child  and  the  child  into  the 
Church.  The  very  nature  of  the  Church  which 
emerged  from  the  long  reformation  period,  a  doc- 
trinal, divided,  sermon-centered,  and  competitive 
Church  of  adults,  fixed  the  interest  of  Churches 
on  grown  folk  and  made  them  blind  to  the  plain 
facts  of  childhood.  During  the  decades  between 
1830  and  1850  the  primary  education  of  all  chil- 
dren in  America  came  to  be  centered  under  state 
control.  Educational  development  in  America 
makes  it  increasingly  certain  that  public  school- 
teachers can  never  be  held  responsible  for  the 
personal  religion  and  morals  based  in  religious 
motives  of  any  school  child.  Many  influences 
had  joined,  before  1914,  to  make  the  problem  of 
the  religious  instruction  of  the  school  population 
of  America  by  far  the  livest  problem  in  both  edu- 
cation and  religion. 

The  religious  instruction  of  schoolchildren  is 
as  much  a  community  task  as  the  nonreligious 
instruction  of  the  same  children.  But  citizens, 
acting  in  the  capacity  of  the  educational  arm  of 
the  state,  the  public  school,  cannot  be  the  teacher 
of  religion;  the  same  citizens,  acting  as  the  edu- 
cational arm  of  the  Church  can  do  it,  ought  to 
do  it,  must  do  it.  But  with  the  Churches  of  the 
past  it  could  not  be  done — and  Protestant  min- 
isters are  the  only  ones  who  have  opposed  the 
doing  of  it  when  straight-out  efforts  were  being 


146     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

made  to  provide  religious  instruction  for  the 
whole  school  population  of  a  city  or  school  dis- 
trict. The  urgency  of  getting  religious  instruc- 
tion to  young  America  is  bringing  the  whole 
matter  of  Church  and  community  directly  before 
the  bar  of  community  judgment. 

Churchmen  who  are  able  to  stand  off  to  one 
side  and  look  at  the  whole  community  in  all  its 
aspects  see  that  the  divided,  doctrinal,  compet- 
itive Church,  however  great  its  past  history,  is  a 
present  calamity.  A  unified,  practical,  coopera- 
tive, service-centered  Church  can  work  alongside 
the  public  school,  supplying  what  the  state  can- 
not supply,  coupling  religious  instruction  with 
the  daily  school  life  of  pupils  and  help  to  make 
the  citizenship  of  the  nation  intelligently  and 
efficiently  religious.  The  immoralities  of  youth 
are  not  at  all  evidences  of  human  depravity  but 
of  Church  blindness  and  Christian  leaders  in  all 
sects  and  denominations  confess  it.  The  immo- 
ralities and  criminalities  of  America,  in  the  judg- 
ment of  the  great  religious  editors  of  the  nation, 
are  so  many  evidences  of  the  impotence  and 
insufficiencies  of  the  Church.  The  cause  for  dis- 
trust of  the  vision  and  ability  of  the  Church 
might  be  seen  through  the  days  spent  in  June, 
1916,  by  great  religious  assemblies  over  "mala 
prohibita,"  negatives,  thou-shalt-nots,  while  the 
whole  world  is  literally  crying  out  to  know  what 
to  do  to  be  religious,  to  put  out  of  human  nature 


The  Religious  Community  147 

its  bitterness  by  putting  in  whatever  it  is  that 
is  needed  to  sweeten  the  waters  mankind  must 
drink.  The  demands  on  the  Church  might  be 
stated  thus: 

1.  Be  the  live  body  of  a  living  Christ  or  give 

up  the  Name. 

2.  Embody  the  unified  spirit  of  the  one  body 

and  quit  seeking  selfish  advantage  for  the 
tongue  over  the  foot. 

3.  Square  up  against  the  real  job  of  the  Church, 

showing  folks  of  all  ages,  especially  young 
folk,  how  to  be  intelligently  and  efficiently 
religious  in  daily  life  and  in  all  social  re- 
lations. 

4.  Become  qualified  for  leadership  of  the  whole 

community  in  all  good  works  or  quietly 
drop  out  of  the  community  and  disappear 
in  the  desert. 

5.  Guide   the   pervasive   influences   of   religion 

into  expression  through  all  the  activities 
of  social  life,  give  up  the  impotent  hermit- 
like exclusiveness  of  the  past,  and  make 
civic   government   and   commercial   inter- 
course as  religious  as  Church  life. 
Easy  enough  to  say  this.     Grant  that  what  is 
said  is  true  and  that  the  Church,  like  the  Cross, 
must  justify  itself  by  the  human  necessities  it 
meets  and  satisfies.     How  is  the  Church  to  be 
and  to  do  so  that  it  shall  command  itself  by  its 
good  works  to  the  good  conscience  of  every  man? 
Religious  instruction  of  the  young!     If  the 
Church   do  this  task  adequately  and  well  the 
whole  field  of  world  service  lies  like  an  open 


148     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

book  before  her :  if  she  fail  in  this  no  other  serv- 
ice can  make  good  for  generations  of  children 
and  youths  trained  to  make  their  morals  on  the 
spot,  tricky  little  liars  become  trained  big  liars. 

Given  a  unified,  practical,  service-centered,  and 
cooperative  Church — then  what?  What  is  reli- 
gion? Can  it  be  taught,  or  only  caught?  What 
is  instruction  in  religion?  What  is  its  content? 
What  are  its  processes?  How  are  boys  and 
girls,  untaught,  unguided,  and  unguarded,  to  be 
made  honest,  considerate,  square-dealing  citizens 
with  a  God  whose  worship  is  in  the  spirit  with 
which  one  lives  with  others  and  in  the  truth  one 
feels  and  thinks  and  does?  The  Religious  Edu- 
cation Association  has  been  compelling  increas- 
ing numbers  of  churchmen  and  educators  to  face 
these  problems  during  the  years  of  this  century. 
Now  what  do  common  and  humble  citizens 
think?  What  is  the  sentiment  of  the  commu- 
nity? Is  religion  popular?  How  many  know 
clearly  enough  what  it  is  to  have  an  intelligent 
opinion  and  make  it  either  unpopular  or  popular? 
There  can  be  no  doubt  but  there  is  vast  igno- 
rance about  what  everybody  is  supposed  to  know. 
Religion  is — what? 

Suppose  children  were  taught  simply  to  try 
to  be  like  the  very  best  person  they  knew?  That 
does  not  go  very  far,  to  be  sure,  but  how  much 
farther  than  that  do  they  actually  go  or  can  they 
go?    It  is  recorded  that  in  order  to  show  every- 


The  Religious  Community  149 

body  how  to  be  religious  God  did  just  that  thing, 
gave  folk  a  Life  to  know,  to  love,  to  live;  gave 
them  that  Life  till  they  knew  it  was  sweet  and 
strong,  too  proud  to  fight  for  some  things  and 
too  brave  not  to  die  for  some  other  things;  and 
set  things  going  in  just  that  same  simple,  natural 
way — men  trying  to  be  like  that  Life  and  making 
others  want  to  be  like  them  so  that  they  could 
say,  "Be  ye  followers  of  me,  as  I  am  of  Christ?" 
Now,  as  a  matter  of  human  fact,  proved  by 
experience  and  observation,  is  not  some  positive 
religious  instruction  always  going  on  wherever 
a  truly  religious  person  is  in  the  presence  of 
immature  and  growing  minds,  regardless  of  what 
that  person  happens  to  be  doing?  If  the  secret 
of  religious  instruction  is  not  in  ideals  which 
appeal,  in  motives  which  move,  in  purposes 
which  inspire  persons  to  be  never  less  than  their 
best,  then  where  is  it?  If  the  process  of  reli- 
gious instruction  is  not  companionship  in  effort 
and  friendly  intercourse,  then  what  is  it?  If  the 
agency  of  religious  instruction  is  not  human 
hands  and  feet  and  tongues  made  active  by  the 
desire  to  be  like  the  best  one  is  able  to  conceive, 
then  what  is  that  agency? 

In  short,  when  the  human  side  of  religion  is 
put  foremost  instead  of  the  abstract  and  specu- 
lative side,  when  religion  is  personalized  and 
made  a  human  thing,  when  the  influence  of 
formed  lives  upon  unformed  lives  is  understood 


150     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

and  heeded,  are  we  not  justified  to  suppose  that 
the  whole  business  of  religious  instruction  and 
Christian  education  will  appear  a  far  simpler  and 
vastly  more  effective  thing  than  we  have  been 
trying  to  make  it  with  our  fussy  machinery  and 
hysterical  methods?  The  National  Education 
Association  had  four  hundred  and  thirty-two 
essays  submitted  in  1915  on  "The  Essential  Place 
of  Religion  in  Education  and  an  Outline  of  a 
Plan  to  Introduce  Religious  Teaching  into  the 
Public  Schools."  The  monograph  published  by 
the  Association  contains  the  five  best  essays  with 
a  synopsis  of  all  the  material  presented  by  other 
essayists.  The  work  shows  an  intense  interest 
throughout  the  nation  in  the  task  and  puts  before 
teachers  and  parents  about  the  best  wisdom  of 
America  on  the  subject.  With  general  interest 
roused  and  with  widespread  determination  to 
give  the  children  of  to-morrow  an  opportunity 
of  higher  grade  than  past  generations  of  youth- 
ful citizens  had,  it  is  very  sure  that  some  plan  of 
efficient  religious  instruction  will  be  wrought 
out.  In  one  of  the  residence  sections  of  Chicago 
school  children  have  regularly  stopped  at  various 
churches  on  their  way  to  school  each  morning 
of  the  school  week  and  had  a  chapel  service. 
One  pastor  reports  that  the  years  he  has  given 
to  this  work  have  been  the  happiest  period  of 
his  already  fruitful  ministry.  The  work  has  been 
conducted  successfully  during  several  years.  One 


The  Religious  Community  151 

of  the  principal  features  of  the  project  is  that 
pastors  and  their  coworkers  plan  to  use  the  time 
to  fill  the  children's  minds  with  religious  ideals 
and  aspirations,  and  then  send  them  on  to  school 
prepared  to  make  the  whole  school-day  expres- 
sional  activity  of  their  religious  ideas.  The  plan 
is  admirable,  both  as  an  experiment  and  as  a 
theory.  It  makes  it  possible  for  religious  per- 
sons to  show  immature  and  growing  persons  how 
to  make  study  and  play,  recitation  and  work,  all 
the  relations  with  teachers  and  playmates  and 
classmates  wholesomely  religious.  When  tend- 
encies to  religious  conduct  are  fixed — that  is  re- 
ligious character,  the  whole  objective  of  religious 
instruction. 

Community  sentiment,  the  sentiment  of  the 
whole  religious  group  in  any  community,  will 
solve  many  of  the  vexed  problems  of  religious 
history  and  life  when  it  insists  upon  and  secures 
the  chance,  the  incentive,  and  the  means  for 
religious  instruction  of  the  whole  school  popula- 
tion of  the  parish. 

SUMMARY 

Religion  is  a  community  problem,  an  affair  of 
deep  concern  to  all  citizens  regardless  of  Church 
membership.  It  has  to  do  with  the  highest  wel- 
fare of  every  living  person  as  well  as  with  those 
who  shall  yet  live.  Linking  religion  to  human 
needs  and  necessities  brushes  away  the  whole 


152     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

field  of  abstract  ideas  which  have  divided  reli- 
gions from  each  other  and  divided  Churches 
against  themselves.  Treating  all  fellow  men  as 
human  kin  is  the  touchstone  of  highest  religious 
life. 

-Only  one  religious  difficulty  confronts  each 
human  being,  the  difficulty  of  maintaining  a  right' 
attitude  toward  God  and  right  conduct  toward 
others:  on  the  success  with  which  one  does  this 
hang  all  the  law  and  the  prophets.  Jesus  founded 
a  community.  The  whole  spirit  of  his  faith  and 
fellowship  is  the  community  spirit,  social  respon- 
sibility and  efficiency  and  betterment.  His  view 
of  his  own  place  in  the  world  is  set  by  himself 
when  he  identified  himself  more  intimately  with 
the  child  than  with  any  other  object  in  the 
created  universe,  and  by  declaring  that  whoever 
received  one  such  child  received  him.  The  com- 
munity spirit  therefore  makes  no  mistake  when 
it  becomes  enwrapped  in  child  welfare. 

The  trend  of  Protestantism  is  to  a  complete 
breakdown  of  divisive  lines  and  eager  search  for 
an  organizing  center  and  impetus.  A  religion 
centered  in  Christ  with  the  child  in  his  arms  is 
different  in  every  way  than  one  centered  in  a 
Christ  beyond  the  clouds. 

The  religious  message  must  be  religious. 
Churches  must  be  religious,  living  messengers 
of  religion,  practical  and  everyday  religion,  a 


The  Religious  Community  153 

religion  of  neighborliness.  Common  people  hear 
this  religion  gladly. 

The  community,  not  the  denomination  or  sect, 
must  be  the  one  outstanding  aim  of  religious 
effort.  The  Church  which  lives  only  to  help  folk 
can  count  on  being  taken  care  of  by  the  folk 
helped. 

The  social  message  is  the  recovery,  in  this 
world  crisis,  of  the  same  gospel  sounded  to 
ancient  Israel  and  later  founded  on  his  own 
brotherliness  by  the  Galilean.  Missions  and  so- 
cial service  are  the  way  of  life. 

Religious  instruction  is  the  pervasive  power 
of  personality  at  work.  The  Church,  wakened 
and  energized,  is  sufficient. 


CHAPTER  Vin 

The  Commercial  Community 

Commercial  Principles 

The  impulse  which  led  most  young  men  and 
women  into  business  pursuits  was  the  very 
prosaic  desire  to  make  a  living,  to  be  able  to 
buy  decent  food  and  clothes  and  recreations,  and 
to  have  a  home.  Men  like  Thorold  Rogers  and 
Professor  Edwin  R.  A.  Seligman  may  not  be  far 
wrong  when  they  insist  that  this  commonplace 
desire  to  live  well  in  one's  surroundings  is  the 
real  clue  to  the  right  understanding  of  all  human 
history.  At  all  events  a  majority  of  each  suc- 
ceeding generation  of  young  Americans  "get  into 
business"  quite  early  in  life.  Some  of  the  boys 
and  girls  have  to  get  out  and  help  make  a  living 
for  the  family.  Some  of  them  simply  cannot 
stand  it  to  remain  in  school — at  least  they  think 
they  cannot,  and  this  amounts  to  about  the 
same  thing — and  they  hunt  for  a  job  or  take  the 
first  one  offered  to  them.  The  immediate  pay 
and  what  can  be  done  with  it,  the  measure  of 
independence  it  confers,  release  from  home  and 
school  discipline,  sense  of  actually  getting  a  start 
toward  achievement,  aU  sorts  of  lures  tempt 
young  folk  to  "cut  the  strings  which  hold  the 

154 


The  Commercial  Community  155 

past"  and  set  out  to  make  a  new  world  for  them- 
selves. Deliberate  choice,  careful  preparation, 
and  thoughtful  study  of  all  the  facts  involved  in 
the  business  or  in  the  youth's  relation  to  it  are 
almost  never  made.  The  ability  to  get  money 
and  have  so  many  dollars  each  week  or  month 
to  spend  looks  so  alluring  that  immature  reason- 
ing powers  go  down  in  the  swirl  of  impulses, 
and  the  first  step  is  taken  in  the  tragic  struggle 
of  the  multitude  for  a  foothold  and  a  competence 
"in  business." 

The  full  measure  of  the  tragedy  appears  only 
at  the  other  end  of  the  line.  Not  counting  those 
who  remain  wage-earners,  official  figures  indi- 
cate that  by  the  time  they  reach  fifty  years  of 
age  ninety-seven  out  of  each  hundred  who  em- 
bark in  business  have  lost  all  their  accumula- 
tions: by  the  time  they  are  sixty  years  of  age 
ninety-five  out  of  each  hundred  men  are  depend- 
ent either  on  their  children  or  on  day's  wages 
for  support.  The  way  into  business  is  so  wide 
open  and  easily  entered  that  few  who  enter  ever 
stop  to  realize  that  vastly  more  than  mere  energy 
and  integrity  are  the  price  of  success,  that  busi- 
ness is  terribly  exacting  and  its  penalties  inex- 
orable. Many  men  who  have  reaped  large  com- 
mercial profits  undertake  to  tell  schoolboys  how 
to  succeed  when,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  not  very 
many  of  them  understand  the  secret  of  their  own 
success  as  accumulators  of  cash. 


156     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

Business  in  all  its  forms  is  the  use  of  facts  in 
the  production  of  other  facts.  Some  men  suc- 
ceed because  they  see  facts  where  they  are  not 
— yet,  and  then  proceed  to  make  the  dream  facts 
real.  James  J.  Hill  saw  the  great  Northwest  as 
"his"  and  society  paid  him  vast  sums  for  mak- 
ing others  see  it.  The  looseness,  indefiniteness, 
world  full  of  surmises  and  guesses,  have  no  place 
in  business,  and  when  business  men  have  to 
guess,  as  they  often  do,  and  stake  their  all  on 
the  outcome,  the  only  secret  of  their  success  is 
that  they  happened  to  guess  right.  If  they  guess 
wrong — ?  The  widow  of  a  wealthy  banker  clerks 
in  a  big  department  store.  When  he  opened  a 
telegram  one  morning  telling  him  he  had  guessed 
wrong,  he  fell  dead  leaving  the  widow  penniless 
with  three  children  to  support.  The  exactions  of 
business  are  the  crushing  judgments  of  facts. 

The  retail  merchant  in  rural  communities  faces 
the  most  difficult  task  in  the  whole  field  of  busi- 
ness enterprises.  This  fact  is  the  more  serious 
because  of  the  close  relation  of  local  business 
men  to  the  material  prosperity  of  the  surround- 
ing locality.  Their  difficulties  may  be  conven- 
iently grouped  under  three  headings :  changes  in 
general  business  principles;  problems  of  admin- 
istration and  organization ;  local  competitions. 

Salesmanship  has  come  to  be  one  of  the  special 
sciences  and  advertising  is  one  of  the  fine  arts. 
The  men  with  whom  the  merchant  deals  for  his 


<% 


The.  Commercial  Community  157 

supplies  are  among  the  keenest  and  best  trained 
minds  of  the  land.  Most  of  them  hold  their 
positions  by  being  able  to  get  "orders"  for  lines 
of  goods.  A  few  of  them  know  more  about  a 
merchant's  business  after  an  hour  or  two  of  con- 
versation and  observation  than  the  merchant 
himself  knows.  Not  all  of  them  will  sacrifice 
orders  and  save  merchants  from  making  bad 
guesses  in  buying — and  bad  guesses  here  mean 
slow  but  certain  death  to  the  business.  Unfor- 
tunately, too,  most  merchants  know  very  much 
more  about  selling  articles  across  the  counter 
than  they  do  about  putting  the  right  goods  at  a 
right  price  behind  the  counter.  Invisible  losses 
from  dead  stocks  and  slow  moving  stocks  have 
driven  many  more  merchants  into  bankruptcy 
than  have  the  visible  losses  of  bad  accounts. 

The  art  of  advertising,  so  far  as  local  retail 
merchants  are  concerned,  is  closely  related  to 
an  entirely  new  principle  developed  in  the  world 
of  retail  trade,  shopping  by  mail  and  ordering 
supplies  from  catalogues  showing  net  prices. 
Energetic  merchants  have  developed  this  prin- 
ciple of  trade  to  such  an  extent  that  it  causes  con- 
sternation in  many  localities  throughout  Amer- 
ica. The  great  mail  order  houses  in  Chicago 
alone  have  built  up  an  aggregate  trade  of  about 
six  million  dollars  weekly,  nearly  one  million 
dollars  a  day.  The  principle  underlying  the  busi- 
ness is  simple,  sound,  according  to  human  nature. 


158     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

and  it  promises  to  grow  more  and  not  less  valu- 
able to  local  trade  as  well  as  to  mail  order  enter- 
prises. The  exasperation  which  the  business 
causes  found  expression  at  the  meeting  of  the 
Illinois  Press  Association  in  Chicago,  in  April, 
1916. 

The  association  had  been  invited  to  a  dinner 
and  a  visit  of  inspection  to  one  of  the  leading 
mail  order  houses.  An  editor  from  the  southern 
part  of  the  state  wrote  a  caustic  resolution  which 
was  unanimously  adopted  after  a  brief  discus- 
sion.   It  read: 

Whereas,  We,  as  newspaper  men,  owe  it  to  the 
communities  in  which  we  live  to  discourage  any- 
thing which  tends  to  pull  down  our  community 
life,  therefore, 

Be  it  Resolved,  That  the  Illinois  Press  Asso- 
ciation decline  this  invitatipn,  believing  as  it  does 
that  the  mail  order  business  as  a  class  is  the 
greatest  enemy  of  country  communities. 

In  the  discussion  an  editor  from  central  Illinois 
was  reported  as  saying,  "Enough  business  goes 
to  the  mail  order  houses  from  S —  and  vicinity  to 
support  eight  good  stores,  each  doing  a  business 
of  fifty  thousand  dollars  a  year." 

There  can  be  no  question  but  that  the  advent 
of  the  mail  order  catalogue  into  millions  of 
American  homes  has  rudely  interrupted  the  even 
tenor  of  retail  trade  relations  in  many  commu- 
nities and  added  another  great  difficulty  to  the 


The  Commercial  Community  159 

already  full  stock  of  troubles  carried  by  local 

merchants. 

And  since  merchants  have  come  to  be  not  only 
indispensable  to  local  newspapers  but  to  every 
other  community  enterprise,  Churches,  lodges, 
clubs,  charities,  schools,  and  all  public  improve- 
ments, it  is  clear  that  the  editors  did  not  over- 
state the  seriousness  of  the  community  problem 
involved. 

The  hopelessness  of  meeting  this  new  and  suc- 
cessful business  principle  with  angry  denuncia- 
tions may  drive  all  who  are  interested  in  local 
trade  prosperity  to  examine  more  closely  into  the 
business  of  retail  merchandising  and  see  if  old 
methods  are  efficient,  if  old  ways  of  trade  can 
stand  competition  with  new  and  powerful  meth- 
ods and  if  the  waste  of  traditional  competitions 
in  supplying  community  needs  cannot  be  changed 
to  community  cooperation.  Churches  and 
preachers  have  been  so  much  derided  during  re- 
cent years  for  wasteful  competitive  methods  that 
it  is  almost  a  satisfaction  to  find  that,  as  a  rule, 
ministers  are  far  more  ready  to  cooperate  and 
work  unselfishly  together  for  community  life  and 
upbuilding  than  are  bankers,  merchants,  and 
physicians.  The  onesided  view  so  often  and 
so  superficially  taken  came  to  light  in  an  Illinois 
city  of  about  forty  thousand  population.  A  mer- 
chant took  a  minister  to  task  for  the  wastefulness 
of  too  many  churches  and  salaried  workers.    The 


160     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

minister  happened  to  be  ready  with  significant 
facts:  the  fifty-five  salaried  religious  workers  in 
the  city  received  an  average  of  one  dollar  and 
eighty-four  cents  per  day  for  their  services ;  two 
hundred  and  four  retail  stores  with  more  than 
eight  hundred  merchants  and  employees  lived  off 
the  same  community  at  a  much  higher  average  of 
daily  compensation.  The  commercial  waste 
vastly  overtopped  the  money  waste  of  competi- 
tive religious  bodies. 

Difficulties  of  retail  trade  growing  out  of  faulty 
business  organization  and  administration  are 
matters  of  personal  preparation  and  mastery  of 
the  principles  of  scientific  management.  They 
are  not  at  all  peculiar  to  rural  sections,  as  the 
department  of  economics  in  Harvard  University 
discovered.  Many  retail  merchants  in  Boston 
were  found  to  be  losing  money  without  being  at 
all  able  to  discover  the  invisible  losses  which 
were  eating  up  their  capital.  Each  community 
suffers  as  its  merchants  suffer;  their  hardships 
are  a  blow  at  community  prosperity;  their  wel- 
fare is  a  large  and  important  part  of  common 
weal.  But  the  community  can  educate  its  mer- 
chants only  in  a  crude  and  harsh  way.  If  they 
will  not  prepare,  will  not  get  command  of  all  the 
facts  and  make  wise  use  of  the  facts  of  successful 
trade — they  find  business  exacting  and  its  pen- 
alties inexorable. 


The  Commercial  Community  161 

Difficulties  of  local  competitions  are  by  far 
the  hardest  to  meet  and  overcome.  The  mere 
statement  of  them  may  help  to  show  the  variety 
of  subtle  influences  confronting  merchants  and 
the  communities  they  serve  and  point  out  some 
needed  steps  toward  the  solution  of  material 
prosperity  for  the  whole  community. 

1.  Multiplication  of  stores.  Generally  speak- 
ing, anyone  can  get  a  stock  of  goods,  rent  a  store 
on  Main  Street  and  go  into  business  within  sixty 
or  ninety  days.  In  the  field  of  big  business,  co- 
operation, combination,  and  gentlemen's  agree- 
ments have  largely  replaced  the  cut-throat  com- 
petition of  former  days.  In  the  field  of  local 
retail  business,  the  way  of  competition  is  wholly 
unguarded  and  as  many  business  enterprises  as 
can  find  room  can  come  in  and  claim  a  share  of 
community  patronage.  Neither  the  merchants 
already  on  the  ground  nor  the  buyers  of  the 
locality  are  organized  to  form  or  express  any 
decided  opinion  on  the  need  for  more  sfores. 
Survival  of  the  fittest  is  the  only  rule.  And  here 
as  elsewhere  in  nature  this  law  sometimes  works 
to  the  survival  of  the  best  fighters  and  least  fit. 
The  best  that  can  be  said  of  it  is  that  it  helps  to 
keep  merchants  from  becoming  drowsy  store- 
keepers. 

2.  Occasional  competition.  The  business  of 
conducting  "Fire  Sales"  or  "Bankrupt  Sales"  by 
traveling  sharks  who  rent  a  store  building  for  a 


162     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

month  or  two,  bolster  their  business  on  flaming 
advertising  and  fiery  sales  methods,  completely 
disorganizes  local  trade  conditions  and  throws 
reputable  and  orderly  business  into  chaos.  Local 
merchants  are  rarely  organized  to  protect  them- 
selves and  the  community  from  these  disastrous 
invasions. 

3'.  Duplication  of  stocks.  Jewelry  in  hard- 
ware stores,,  hardware  in  drug  stores,  drugs  in 
harness  shops,  and  restaurants  in  churches  are 
coming  to  be  quite  the  rule  in  many  localities. 
New  demands  for  electrical  and  automobile  sup- 
plies bring  in  not  only  garages  but  additional 
stocks  into  many  stores  not  nominally  in  the 
gasoline,  glass,  cmd  brass-goods  business.  This 
duplication  of  articles  of  common  use  makes  it 
impossible  for  many  merchants  to  carry  respect- 
able stocks  of  their  own  particular  lines,  and 
shoppers  are  driven,  often  against  their  inclina- 
tions, to  resort  to  automobile  or  mail  buying. 

4.  Out-of-town  trading.  The  automobile  is 
just  as  ready  to  hit  local  trade  as  local  religion. 
The  ease  with  which  most  people  can  now  reach 
stores  at  a  distance  of  twenty  to  fifty  miles,  the 
lure  of  the  ride  and  inspection  of  new  stocks  of 
goods,  the  element  of  surprise  and  the  hunt  for 
"bargains'*  are  all  favorable  conditions  for  con- 
sumers but  distinctly  unfavorable  for  merchants 
with  capital  tied  up  in  stocks  of  goods  and  idle 
clerks  waiting  for  trade.     This  difficulty  would 


The  Commercial  Community  163 

not  fall  so  hardly  upon  merchants  if  it  were  not 
that  out-of-town  shopping  is  almost  always  cash 
business  while  stay-at-home  trad^  is  very  largely 
credit  business.  In  some  cities  this  feature  of 
out-of-town  trade  is  a  very  serious  commercial 
problem. 

5.  Department  store  and  chain  store  competi- 
tion. Within  the  scope  of  free  department  store 
deliveries  the  menace  to  local  trade  is  severe. 
Diversion  of  a  proportionately  large  volume  of 
trade  to  points  out  of  town  makes  it  necessary 
for  many  local  merchants  to  "charge  all  the  traffic 
will  bear,"  regardless  of  normal  rate  of  profits. 
A  local  merchant  asked  thirty-five  cents  a  pound 
for  a  commodity,  from  a  man  then  on  his  way 
into  the  city.  The  same  brand  of  goods  in 
identical  package  was  delivered  the  same  evening 
to  the  man's  door,  nearly  forty  miles  away,  at 
twenty-five  cents  a  pound.  The  whole  trade  of 
that  citizen  was  driven  from  local  stores  by 
exorbitant  charges — and  the  suburban  city  is  one 
of  the  finest  samples  of  a  starved  community  to 
be  found  on  the  continent. 

Chain  stores,  operated  under  one  management, 
goods  bought  by  wholesale,  sold  at  the  counter 
for  cash  only  and  nothing  delivered;  operating 
expenses  cut  to  the  minimum  and  purchases 
made  at  the  maximum  of  advantage ;  appealing  to 
the  "personal  inspection"  instincts  of  housewives 
— these,  too,  are  adding  troubles  to  local  mer- 

(12) 


164     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

chants  of  the  old  school.  Almost  never  are  local 
merchants  organized  as  a  commercial  group  or 
unit  to  meet  either  of  these  active  forms  of  com- 
petition. 

6.  Mail  order  trade.  Part  of  this  has  already 
been  noted  as  a  new  principle  of  business.  Along 
with  the  established  mail  order  houses  are  the 
big  enterprises  all  over  the  lan4  which,  by  the 
development  of  the  advertising  art,  have  entered 
the  realm  of  current  literature,  taken  captive 
some  widely  circulated  magazines  and  are  mak- 
ing these  periodicals  more  read  for  their  adver- 
tising than  for  the  "reading  matter"  which  they 
contain.  The  amount  of  trade  attracted  by  these 
publications  is  unknown  but  it  is  vast  or  the 
volume  of  quite  extraordinary  advertising  could 
not  be  maintained.  Unorganized  local  merchants 
cannot  hope  to  duplicate  the  scientific  advertising 
sent  in  to  local  papers  by  out-of-town  merchants, 
and  even  when  local  publishers  decline  profitable 
advertising  contracts  with  distant  merchants  they 
are  only  delaying,  at  their  own  cost,  the  delivery 
into  local  homes  of  the  most  alluring  advertise- 
ments which  trained  skill  can  contrive. 

7.  Long-time  book  accounts.  In  agricultural 
sections  this  difficulty,  created  chiefly  by  mer- 
chants themselves,  is  a  stupendous  barrier  to 
commercial  success.  Many  merchants  count 
themselves  fortunate  to  command  the  trad6  of 
patrons  who  are  known  to  be  financially  "good" 


The  Commercial  Community  165 

and  sure  to  pay  some  time,  even  if  they  have  to 
wait  till  the  farmer  or  wealthy  customer  feels  in 
the  mood  to  sign  up  a  bunch  of  checks  for  the 
benefit  of  local  creditors.  Not  many  merchants 
go  into  business  anticipating  that  they  will  do  a 
kind  of  banking  business,  and  do  it  in  a  way  that 
would  quickly  bankrupt  an  ordinary  bank  or 
money-lending  institution.  When  a  merchant 
sells  goods  on  credit,  what  he  actually  does  is  to 
lend  the  customer  money  to  buy  goods.  The 
open  account  is  the  only  evidence  of  indebted- 
ness between  the  lender  and  borrower.  By  some 
peculiar  twist  of  human  nature,  when  the  account 
has  stood  for  some  time  many  debtors  feel  a  sort 
of  proprietary  right  in  it  and  are  highly  offended 
if  the  merchant  asks  for  his  money.  They  often 
assume  that  their  ability  to  pay  is  questioned  and 
they  feel,  or  affect  to  feel,  resentful  if  they  get  a 
"dun."  Merchants  don't  want,  of  course,  to 
oftend  good  customers — and  continue  to  encour- 
age about  the  lowest  possible  form  of  theft. 
Sneak-thieves  do  not  put  up  their  friendship  or 
acquaintance  as  a  bait  to  the  victim  they  rob, 
they  only  outwit  him  by  superior  cunning. 
Ordinary  collection  agencies  do  not  reach  much 
of  this  very  tangible  source  of  invisible  loss  to 
merchants.  Profits  come  from  frequent  turns 
of  stock,  not  from  desultory  and  inefficient 
money-lending.  But  unorganized  merchants  are 
Helpless  in  the  web  of  their  own  weaving  and  find 


166     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

themselves  frequently  unable  to  break  bad  habits 
which  have  been  built  into  the  traditions  of  an 
established  business.  In  many  localities  it  is  not 
uncommon  to  find  merchants  with  one  stock  of 
goods  on  their  shelves  and  another  stock,  almost 
as  large,  on  "the  back  or  in  the  bodies  of  their 
customers,  while  the  merchants  are  themselves 
borrowing  money  at  banks  to  cover  their  bills. 

A  few  merchants  in  all  localities  are  making 
headway  in  the  face  of  all  these  difficulties,  mak- 
ing a  decent  living  and  helping  to  build  up  the 
community.  But  the  great  majority  of  trades- 
men are  not  making  headway  even  in  these  piping 
times  of  prosperity.  They  are  making  a  living, 
most  of  them.  They  are  helping,  usually,  to 
build  up  the  community,  but  they  sacrifice  more 
to  do  it  than  any  other  class  of  citizens.  Their 
difficulties,  very  real  and  very  numerous,  are  a 
challenge  to  the  whole  of  every  community  which 
regards  material  prosperity  as  a  definite  and 
worthy  element  of  community  welfare  and  effi- 
ciency. Left  to  the  traditional  each-merchant- 
for-himself  policy  the  struggle  for  existence 
would  simply  have  to  continue  its  merciless  grind 
of  individuals  while  the  business  of  the  town  is 
at  a  standstill.  Agricultural  prosperity  is  often 
more  marked  just  outside  the  town  than  is  com- 
munity prosperity  inside  town  limits.  Mer- 
chants, unable  to  move  as  one  mind  to  meet  any 
situation  or  condition  and  compelled  to  attend 


The  Commercial  Community  167 

strictly  each  to  his  own  business,  are  simply  the 
victims  of  facts  and  not  their  masters,  less  pros- 
perous and  less  competent  often  than  the  farmers 
who  are  strangling  the  life  out  of  the  town. 
Here,  again,  angry  denunciation  of  farmers  is  as 
futile  as  bitter  hate  toward  mail  order  houses. 
The  interests  of  merchants,  farmers,  and  of  all 
citizens  of  the  locality  require  that  some  plan  be 
undertaken  that  will  help  to  build  up  the  town 
center  of  the  community  and  not  starve  it  to 
death  or  condemn  it  to  die  of  dry  rot. 

CREATING  A  COMMERCIAL  COMMUNITY 

Some  merchants  are  big  enough  to  see  the 
interests  of  the  whole  community  first  and  their 
own  commercial  welfare  as  an  inevitable  part  of 
generally  prosperous  conditions.  These  mer- 
chants will,  of  course,  invite  the  cooperation  of  all 
local  tradesmen  in  a  systematic  cooperation,  for 
an  offensive  and  defensive  organization  of  their 
interests:  offensive  in  the  way  of  an  agressive 
campaign  to  develop  for  themselves  all  the  trade 
in  territory  immediately  at  hand  which  is  now 
going  to  out-of-town  points ;  defensive  in  the  way 
of  mutual  protection  by  means  of  cooperative 
methods  of  deliveries,  buying,  storing,  stocks  and 
specialties.  Systematic  cooperaticwi  in  all  these 
phases  of  trade  does  not  imply  an  abandonment 
of  the  principle  of  self-interest  but  it  does  imply 
a  vigorous  use  of  that  principle  by  entirely  dif- 


168     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

ferent  means  than  cut-throat  local  competition  to 
finish  what  the  same  sort  o£  competition  from 
outside  is  vigorously  promoting. 

There  is  a  much  larger  field  of  common  inter- 
ests before  the  merchants  in  each  locality  than 
most  of  them  realize,  and  systematic  cooperation 
in  common  interests  means  the  creation  of  a 
commercial  community  at  the  heart  of  the  social 
community. 

The  trade  center  of  a  certain  county  seat  city 
fronts  the  railroad  for  about  half  a  mile.  Eighty 
tradesmen  make  up  the  group,  like  logs  make  up 
a  raft.  Their  stores  are  close  together — they're 
not.  Their  one  common  interest  is  to  make  a 
living  off  the  several  thousand  residents  of  the 
locality.  They  are  confronted  by  all  the  diffi- 
culties listed  above — and  more.  They  do  not 
compete  with  each  other — they  haven't  life 
enough  or  money  enough  to  make  the  game  inter- 
esting, for  outside  competition  is  sharp.  Within 
a  radius  of  five  miles  is  a  big  permanent  farm 
trade,  much  bigger  than  half  a  dozen  ordinary 
factories  would  bring,  but  practically  none  of  it 
comes  to  the  county  seat.  Local  merchants  do 
not  aim  to  compete  with  the  big  stores  forty  or 
fifty  miles  away.  They  deliberately  choose  to  be 
content  with  the  little  trade  which  customers 
have  not  time  or  inclination  to  take  elsewhere. 
Someone  persuaded  most  of  the  merchants  to 
join  in  a  plan  for  cooperative  deliveries.     That 


The  Commercial  Community  169 

cut  down  expenses.  Seven  who  handled  one  line 
got  together  and  bought  bulk  goods  in  car  lots, 
one  of  the  number  making  all  the  purchases. 
That  cut  expenses  and  saved  valuable  time. 
They  used  one  storehouse  for  bulk  shipments  in 
and  out.  More  expense  saved.  They  agreed, 
after  many  informal  conferences,  not  to  duplicate 
stocks  and  specialties  but  to  divide  the  trade 
among  them  and  play  into  each  other's  hands  in 
promoting  local  trade.  This  released  much  cap- 
ital, increased  each  line  of  stocks,  and  started  an 
era  of  friendliness  which  reached  throughout  the 
locality.  They  promoted  a  "one  check"  club 
among  customers  so  that  housewives  could  send 
one  check  with  all  local  accounts  to  any  of  the 
banks  before  the  tenth  of  each  month  and  distri- 
bution of  the  total  amount  would  be  made  at  the 
bank.  This  increased  convenience  encouraged 
promptness  of  payment,  cut  down  open  accounts, 
and  increased  the  volume  of  cash  trade.  The 
people  of  the  locality  are  split  into  about  as  many 
factions  as  Churches,  lodges,  clubs,  and  politics 
can  make  with  only  a  few  thousand  people  to 
work  with — but  at  the  heart  of  the  social  chaos 
a  real  commercial  community  has  come  into  being 
and  it  can  make  one  of  the  finest  communities  in 
America  out  of  the  present  poor  material. 

An  energetic  Iowa  merchant  is  creating  a  com- 
mercial community  consisting  of  himself  and  all 
the  customers  within  a  radius  of  ten  miles  of  his 


170     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

big  out-in-the-open  department  store.  His  cat- 
alogues come  out  immediately  after  the  issues  o£ 
his  big  competitor  in  Chicago  and  they  go  into 
each  home  in  the  trade  territory.  He  invites 
comparison  of  catalogue  prices  and  shows  that 
the  same  goods  can  be  bought  for  less  money  and 
better  goods  for  the  same  money  at  home  than 
in  any  out-of-town  center.  This  competitive 
trade  is  spot  cash  and  no  produce  taken  in  ex- 
change. Twice  each  year  a  specially  trained 
representative  goes  out  with  a  car  of  samples, 
visits  each  home,  takes  orders  for  forty-five  and 
sixty  days'  future  delivery,  and  makes  it  possible 
for  the  merchant  to  go  into  the  open  market  and 
buy  according  to  orders  in  hand.  Practically 
every  dollar  of  out-of-town  trade  is  now  anchored 
by  personal  ties  and  self-interest  to  the  store- 
centered  community.  A  southern  Ohio  merchant 
does  practically  the  same  thing  with  his  trade 
territory,  except  that  he  sends  out  a  popular  and 
expert  salesman  to  make  house-to-house  canvass 
of  the  big  trade  district  three  or  four  times  each 
year.  During  the  bad  roads  period  of  winter 
this  salesman  often  does  a  larger  volume  of  cash- 
on-delivery  trade  than  any  dozen  stores  in  the 
county. 

Systematic  cooperation  will  enable  any  group 
of  merchants  to  do  successfully  what,  with  rare 
exceptions,  they  cannot  do  alone.  This  coopera- 
tion, in  not  a  few  instances,  must  be  started  by 


The  Commercial  Community  171 

other  initiative  than  their  own,  be  forced  upon 
them,  in  other  words,  by  interested  citizens  who 
are  not  merchants.  The  plain  truth  might  as 
well  be  told  flatly:  ther^  is  neither  reason  nor 
sense  in  any  body  of  consumers  anywhere  in 
America  being  compelled  to  send  to  Chicago  or 
any  other  city  to  get  goods  by  mail ;  cooperation 
by  local  merchants  makes  possible  successful 
competition  with  any  out-of-town  sources  of  sup- 
ply; merchants  have  no  more  right  to  ask  con- 
sumers to  pay  higher  prices  for  goods  in  order 
that  they  may  more  successfully  fight  each  other 
than  have  Churches  to  ask  communities  to  sup- 
port competitive  organizations  when  the  period 
of  religious  feudism  is  past.  There  is  a  basis  of 
mutual  square  deal  between  merchants  and  their 
customers  as  well  as  of  customers  toward  their 
local  tradesmen.  In  not  a  few  communities  the 
merchants  are  their  own  worst  enemies,  blindly 
creating  the  very  conditions  which  make  it  in- 
creasingly hard  to  make  a  living  in  business. 
Merchants  have  it  in  their  power,  almost  more 
than  any  other  one  body  of  citizens,  to  make  com- 
munity welfare  a  worthy  rallying  cry  and  to  lead 
off  in  the  commercial  field  with  a  demonstration 
of  community  efficiency  in  commercial  and  social 
relations.  People  at  large  are  disposed  to  con- 
sider favorably  any  projects  which  promise  com- 
mon prosperity.  The  call  of  better  conditions 
for  all  is  popular — it  must  not  be  abused. 


172     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

Several  cities  in  the  north  Central  States  are 
raising  large  sums  to  be  used  as  bonuses  and 
other  benefits  in  securing  the  location  of  manu- 
facturing plants — ^for  community  welfare.  One 
such  city  did  secure  a  fine  factory.  Its  manager 
and  an  increasing  number  of  employees  do  all 
the  buying  which  can  be  done  by  mail  and  have 
their  supplies  sent  in  from  Chicago.  A  neighbor- 
ing city  is  in  a  factional  row  because  the  local 
improvement  association  emptied  its  treasury  to 
help  buy  a  free  site  for  a  rival  factory  to  one 
already  on  the  ground.  Another  neighboring 
county  seat  is  raising  tens  of  thousands  of  dol- 
lars to  bid  for  the  location  of  industries,  while  in 
the  county  round  about  is  more  trade  done  by 
mail  in  Chicago  than  would  be  done  by  the  force 
of  three  or  four  ordinary  factories,  and  not  a 
finger  is  being  lifted  by  local  merchants  to  de- 
velop this  trade  territory,  to  tie  the  country  folk 
to  their  proper  commercial  center,  or  to  create  a 
real  commercial  community  as  a  basis  for  per- 
manent social  efficiency.  Now  the  question  must 
be  raised,  is  it  efficient  or  even  practical  to  make 
generous  bids  for  factories  and  let  permanent 
trade  go  uncared  for?  Industries  which  can  be 
bought  to  come  can  also  be  bought  to  go  or  to 
close  down,  as  industrial  history  abundantly 
proves.  The  same  energy  spent  in  raising  money 
and  securing  factories  would  produce  amazing 
results  in  breaking  down  barriers  between  coun- 


The  Commercial  Community  173 

try  folk  and  town  folk,  between  merchants  and 
rural  consumers  and  producers,  and  in  replacing 
these  barriers  by  numerous  ties  of  live,  common 
interests.  Property  values  in  many  cities  and 
towns  are  lower  than  they  were  a  generation  ago. 
Property  in  both  town  and  country  elsewhere  has 
been  appreciably  raised  in  desirability  and,  in 
consequence,  in  actual  value  by  the  establish- 
ment of  more  neighborly  relations  throughout 
an  entire  trade  territory.  An  entirely  new  spirit 
is  coming  into  modern  business,  especially  in  re- 
tail trade  relations.  The  fact  that  commercial 
activities  alone  cannot  create  permanent  material 
prosperity  in  any  locality  has  been  proved  at 
vast  cost.  Social  ties  binding  men  and  women 
by  many  common  interests  are  the  only  sure  con- 
ditions of  general  welfare  which  experience  ap- 
proves. Communities  can  commit  social  suicide 
but  they  cannot  be  commercially  assassinated 
when  they  are  grounded  in  fruitful  social  inter- 
ests. 

The  lesson  of  social  welfare  is  needed  fully  as 
much  by  merchants  in  larger  cities  as  in  the 
smaller  cities  and  towns.  Secretaries  of  cham- 
bers of  commerce  and  commercial  clubs  are  fre- 
quently in  despair  over  the  reluctance  of  mer- 
chants to  pull  together  systematically  either  for 
their  own  particular  interests  or  for  the  larger 
interests  of  common  welfare.  Merchants  need 
to  face  the  truth  that  their  carelessness  and  pre- 


174     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

occupation  with  private  cares  make  them  the 
hardest  of  all  groups  to  bring  to  conference  and 
deliberation  even  for  their  own  commercial  self- 
protection,  to  say  nothing  of  broader  community 
concerns.  The  new  organization  of  the  world, 
the  nationalization  of  commerce  and  industry,  of 
capital  and  labor,  of  the  instruments  of  produc- 
tion and  distribution,  and  of  trade  expansion 
reaching  out  from  Europe  are  compelling  Amer- 
ican citizens  to  think  in  larger  terms  and  of 
wider  interests.  The  old  age  of  private  initiative 
and  aggressive  self-interest  in  little  lines  must 
merge  into  a  new  age  of  social  initiative  and 
aggressive  self-interest  in  community  lines.  Mer- 
chants who  cannot  or  will  not  cooperate  with 
their  neighbors  will  find  an  increasing  coopera- 
tion of  neighbors  working  against  them.  If  the 
principles  of  business  were  exacting  and  its  pen- 
alties severe  in  the  former  age  of  the  world,  they 
will  not  be  less  so  when  they  are  based  on  the 
broader  social  foundations  of  common  well-being 
and  efficiency.  Leadership  has  a  definite  price. 
Merchants  who  pay  the  price  of  leadership  will 
find  surprising  aid  springing  up  from  unsuspected 
sources  to  help  them  make  community  prosperity 
permanent.  If  local  commercial  representatives 
do  not  take  the  lead  in  putting  community  wel- 
fare on  sure  and  stable  foundations,  those  who 
are  leading  may  not  be  merciful — they  are  not 
now — to  trailers  in  social  progress.    Conspicuous 


The  Commercial  Community  175 

success  by  merchants,  in  such  cities  as  Trenton, 
Missouri,  in  leading  out  to  make  a  whole  county 
a  self-conscious  social  and  commercial  unit,  dem- 
onstrates beyond  argument  the  price  which  must 
be  paid  and  the  splendid  compensations  awaiting 
those  who  will  put  brains  and  time  into  the  busi- 
ness of  community  development.  It  will  not 
come  by  accident  nor  will  it  come  in  a  month  or 
a  year.  It  will  come  as  true  success  always  does, 
by  whole-hearted  devotion  to  a  worthy  cause,  by 
loyalty  to  the  interests  of  mankind. 


CHAPTER  IX 

The  Industrial  Community 

Industrial  Principles 

The  Age  of  Machinery!  Natural  forces  in- 
creasingly harnessed  and  guided!  Workmen 
becoming  impersonal  like  the  machines  they 
operate  and  tend !  Owners  hid  behind  impersonal 
legal  fictions!  Employers  and  employees  con- 
cealed by  abstract  Capital  and  Labor !  Industrial 
feudalism,  social  aristocracy  and  an  ideal  of 
political  democracy!  This  was  America  at  the 
close  of  the  old  age.  But  solid  foundations  had 
already  been  laid  on  which  to  build  a  new  age, 
when  science  and  inhumanity  joined  hands  to 
drown  the  old  age  of  the  world  in  blood  and  un- 
utterable anguish. 

Efficiency  was  the  agent.  Elimination  of 
waste,  utilization  of  waste  products,  reduction  of 
costs,  maximum  energy  from  least  power,  least 
friction  and  lost  motion,  absolute  command  of 
all  relevant  facts — all  the  ideals  of  efficiency 
were  simply  business  sense  applied  to  all  achieve- 
ments with  the  impersonal  exactness  of  applied 
mathematics.  Owners  and  operators  of  ma- 
chines would,  quite  naturally,  be  first  to  seek 
out  and  use  every  principle  of  scientific  manage- 

176 


The  Industrial  Community  177 

ment.  But  once  set  a  passion  for  efficiency  in 
motion  and  it  is  bound  inevitably  to  come  face 
to  face  with  the  changeless  human  factors  of 
infants  and  children  and  youths  and  adults,  and 
with  their  place  in  a  scheme  of  things  based  upon 
efficiency.  The  value  to  industry  of  human 
beings  capable  and  competent  could  not  be 
shoved  to  one  side  whenever  any  phase  of  con- 
versation came  up  for  discussion.  Natural  re- 
sources are  worthless  except  in  relation  to  the 
human  beings  whose  resources  they  are.  Con- 
servation of  human  energies  is  of  immensely 
greater  importance,  even  in  industries,  than  the 
saving  of  latent  powers  in  mineral  and  vegetable 
resources.  Effective  efficiency  drove  industrial 
engineers  to  the  consideration  of  human  well- 
being  as  an  element  of  progress,  and  this  brought 
welfare  work  to  the  fore  as  an  indispensable  part 
of  scientific  industry. 

A  good  working  nucleus  of  employers  with 
lively  human  sympathies  had  already  anticipated 
the  welfare  work  of  others  who  came  to  it  by 
the  roundabout  efficiency  route.  Multitudes  of 
men  who  hired  the  skill  and  energies  of  other 
men  never  lost  the  human  touch  with  the  men 
they  employed,  never  lost  their  way  in  the  sea  of 
abstractions  and  did  not  allow  their  coworkers  to 
lose  their  way  in  wordy  fogs  about  "class"  dis- 
tinctions and  antagonisms.  These  men  kept  alive 
the  spirit  of  friendly  interest  with  the  other 


178     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

human  beings  who  lived  on  the  income  of  in- 
dustrial work.  America  contained  vast  numbers 
of  such  employers,  some  of  them  being  among 
the  much  villified  millionaires.  These  men  were 
not  startled  when,  in  discussing  the  legal  status 
of  corporations,  President  Wilson  declared  that 
all  guilt  is  personal,  that  corporations  cannot  be 
criminals  and  do  criminal  acts.  Neither  were 
they  shocked  and  astounded  when  Mother  Jones 
and  John  D.  Rockefeller,  Jr.,  met  as  a  woman  and 
a  man  who  had  very  many  human  interests  in 
common.  Only  those,  and  they  are  many,  who 
lost  touch  with  the  race  of  infants  and  boys  and 
girls  and  youths  and  parents  felt  themselves  to 
be  a  very  superior  kind  of  human  beings,  stew- 
ards by  grace  of  God — some  kind  of  a  god — of 
special  privileges  and  opportunities  and  rights. 
Considerable  progress  had  been  made  in  the 
industrial  world  in  the  matter  of  scientific  man- 
agement of  machines  and  materials.  Not  much 
progress  had  been  made  in  the  scientific  manage- 
ment of  men — ^but  it  was  an  incalculable  advance 
over  the  past  when  it  was  fully  discovered  that 
this  was  a  fundamental  problem  to  every  leader 
in  the  field  of  industry.  The  general  principles 
of  efficiency  are  familiar  to  nearly  all  the  heads 
of  industrial  concerns;  the  importance  of  wel- 
fare work  is  generally  recognized  by  them. 
Upon  them,  therefore,  in  very  large  measure  de- 
pends the  responsibility  of  leadership  in  every 


The  Industrial  Community  179 

effort  to  set  the  same  factory  principles  of  effi- 
ciency to  work  in  the  community  outside  the 
factory  and  to  put  social  welfare  projects  on  a 
sound  and  scientific  basis.  "What  Scientific 
Management  Means  to  America's  Industrial 
Position"  is  admirably  discussed  in  the  Annals 
of  the  American  Academy  of  Political  and  Social 
Sciences,  by  Frank  B.  Gilbreth  and  Lillian  Gil- 
breth.  What  scientific  management  of  commu- 
nity welfare  means  to  the  industrial  and  social 
life  of  America  ought  to  be  written  in  live  letters 
during  the  next  decade  by  men  who  seem  to  be 
called  for  such  a  time  as  this.  Patience,  however, 
is  demanded  in  a  more  than  usual  degree.  While 
efficiency  has  been  built  into  industry  and  it 
seems  quite  the  simplest  and  most  natural  thing 
to  those  who  understand  it  and  adopt  it,  slip- 
shod habits  of  inefficiency  have  become  ingrained 
in  the  conduct  of  municipal  government  and 
public  interests.  These  habits  rooted  in  the 
minds  of  a  whole  citizenship  cannot  be  broken 
up  and  new  habits  built  so  readily  as  under  indus- 
trial compulsion.  Men  who  know  sometimes  for- 
got wholly  how  they  felt  and  acted  before  they 
knew.  Chasms  are  more  easily  made  in  commu- 
nity life  between  citizens  with  souls  set  on  effi- 
ciency and  those  to  whom  efficiency  means 
chiefly  interference  with  personal  liberty  to  do  as 
one  pleases — such  chasms  are  more  easily  made 

(13) 


180     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

thatn  Dridged  or  closed.    But  leadership  in  social 
efficiency  does  not  balk  at  chasms. 

Two  outstanding  motives  impel  industrial  lead- 
ers to  be  foremost  in  promoting  community  wel- 
fare and  efficiency :  the  increasing  handicap  which 
inefficient  factories  must  face  in  the  new  age 
makes  it  imperative  that  every  industry  be 
manned  throughout  by  the  most  efficient  help 
to  be  had;  factory  workers  who  are  hopelessly 
inefficient  in  all  relations  outside  the  factory  can 
never  be  wholly  efficient  in  any  of  their  relations 
inside  of  it.  In  other  words,  industrial  condi- 
tions demand  efficiency  in  local  factories;  fac- 
tory efficiency  demands  community  efficiency  and 
welfare.  And  community  efficiency  is  simply  a 
systematic  cooperation  of  all  citizens  for  the 
best  interests  and  complete  well-being  of  all  the 
babies  and  children  and  youths  and  parents  in 
the  locality. 

LOCAL  INDUSTRIAL  CONDITIONS 

Communities  as  a  rule  desire  to  have  one  or 
many  factories  located  within  them.  Greatness, 
in  an  age  of  machinery,  is  bound  to  be  measured 
mainly  by  whirring  wheels,  clouds  of  smoke  or 
vapor  and  rapidly  circulating  sums  of  money — 
and  what  American  community  does  not  long  to 
be  great  among  its  fellows ! 

Location  of  industries  in  communities  and  na- 
tions  is   governed   by   the   natural   or   artificial 


The  Industrial  Community  181 

advantages  which  the  industry  can  command. 
Natural  advantages  are  held  to  be  indispensable 
but,  in  America  at  least,  advantages  purely  artifi- 
cial are  most  eagerly  sought  and  demanded. 
Abundant  power  at  hand,  steady  supply  of  raw 
materials,  accessible  markets,  transportation  at 
reasonable  cost  for  both  materials  and  products, 
a  sure  supply  of  workmen  who  are  unskilled, 
skilled,  or  capable  of  becoming  skilled,  and  facil- 
ities for  meeting  the  human  needs  of  employers 
and  employees  in  their  domestic  and  social  rela- 
tions— these  are  natural  advantages  without 
which  it  is  increasingly  difficult  either  to  secure 
the  location  of  factories  or  to  hold  those  which 
are  located.  Control  of  markets  and  of  raw  ma- 
terials by  great  industrial  combinations  have 
made  it  altogether  efficient  to  buy  up  and  put 
out  of  business  thousands  of  superfluous  fac- 
tories or  to  move  machinery  to  a  few  central 
localities  where  cost  of  operation  might  be  re- 
duced to  a  minimum.  This  condition  powerfully 
affects  the  artificial  advantages  which  commu- 
nities in  the  past  have  been  wont  to  urge  upon 
manufacturers.  Free  sites,  free  power  or  water, 
exemptions  from  taxes,  sums  of  money  called 
subsidies  or  bonuses,  preferential  treatment  by 
transportation  companies,  protective  tariffs — all 
such  expedients  are  temporary,  incapable  of  giv- 
ing stable  foundation  to  industry,  likely  to  give 
subtle  and  misleading  appearance  of  prosperity. 


182     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

and  almost  certain,  in  America,  when  they  have 
once  been  given  as  a  grace  to  be  demanded  later 
as  a  duty.  In  the  case  of  industries  of  increasing 
returns,  industries  which  need  artificial  props  to 
start  them  going  but  which  gather  power  of 
self-support  with  their  own  momentum,  the  giv- 
ing of  artificial  advantage  is  justified.  But  the 
rank  selfishness  of  American  manufacturers  has 
filled  both  local  and  national  politics  full  of  in- 
visible governments  and  the  confusion  of  endless 
dishonesties.  Because  government  during  the 
centuries  has  been  mostly  organized  selfishness 
it  has  been  a  most  convenient  tool  of  industrial 
leaders  of  the  public-be-damned  type.  This  im- 
perious feudalism  and  blind  selfishness  has 
caused  acutely  or  chronically  nearly  all  the  wars 
since  governments  ceased  to  be  mainly  military 
enterprises.  Navalism  and  militarism  had  be- 
come only  the  two  strong  arms  of  organized 
brute  force  backing  up  business  ambitions.  War 
will  continue  to  be  inevitable  among  men  so  long 
as  the  causes  of  war  are  knowingly  or  blindly 
promoted.  To  thrust  artificial  advantages  into 
the  hands  of  one  group  of  citizens  or  to  recog- 
nize the  right  of  one  group  of  citizens  to  demand 
artificial  advantages  over  all  others,  whether 
these  groups  are  made  up  of  industrial  managers 
or  industrial  workmen,  is  to  continue  to  create 
undemocratic  relations,  to  undermine  democracy, 
to  foster  the  forces  of  conflict.    And,  in  an  age 


The  Industrial  Community  183 

of  machinery,  a  combination  of  political  democ- 
racy, social  aristocracy,  and  industrial  feudalism 
or  monarchy  will  never  make  one  community  a 
democratic  leader  of  other  communities  nor 
make  America  a  trusted  leader  among  the  na- 
tions. Public  attention  has  been  widely  forced 
to  consider  this  issue  through  the  unparalleled 
clearness  with  which  the  issue  was  drawn  be- 
tween President  Wilson  and  a  group  of  great 
newspapers:  humanity  or  selfish  nationalism, 
democracy  or  feudalism,  the  rights  of  men  or  the 
rights  of  a  few  men,  brotherliness  or  brutality. 

Communities  do  well  to  advertise  and  exploit 
their  natural  advantages.  Recent  industrial  his- 
tory shows  the  peril  of  creating  artificial  advan- 
tages and,  in  a  few  years,  have  the  industry 
moved  or  close  down  and  leave  the  last  state  of 
the  community  much  worse  than  the  first.  Far 
better  is  it  for  the  citizens  of  all  communities  to 
plan  systematic  cooperation  among  themselves 
to  make  their  locality  the  best  of  its  natural  kind, 
domestic,  agricultural,  educational,  a  distributor 
of  supplies,  or  any  other,  than  to  seek  by  bonuses 
or  subsidies  to  become  something  which,  for  lack 
of  permanent  natural  advantages,  they  cannot 
be  sure  of  remaining  permanently.  One  of  the 
worst  features  of  creating  artificial  advantages  in 
a  community  is  that  it  diverts  both  commercial 
and  social  attention  from  exploiting  to  the  full 
the  permanent  conditions  of  material  and  moral 


184     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

prosperity  which  lie  all  around  the  imaginary 
political  line  dividing  town  from  country. 

Take  a  concrete  case,  the  city  of  M — .  It  created 
fine  artificial  advantages  and  succeeded  in  get- 
ting one  large  factory  and  several  smaller  plants 
to  locate  there.  The  possession  of  special  favors 
and  advantages  of  visible  kind  put  the  owners 
and  managers  of  the  plants  in  a  class  apart  from 
all  other  citizens.  Regularity  of  pay  and  big 
weekly  pay  rolls  are  an  unqualified  commercial 
help  to  a  city,  provided  there  is  a  community 
spirit,  a  common  civic  pride  and  purpose,  in  the 
citizens.  Local  merchants  at  once  began  indi- 
vidually to  capture  as  large  a  share  as  possible 
of  the  new  local  trade.  The  workmen  who  were 
brought  in  were  of  high  class.  They  promptly 
resented  what  looked  like  commercial  exploita- 
tion of  their  necessities.  The  managers  were 
highly  trained  to  the  ideals  of  efficiency  and  of 
welfare.  Employees  were  encouraged  to  put 
their  best  into  the  business  and  the  business  put 
its  best  into  their  welfare:  trained  nurses,  free 
medical  and  dental  service,  finely  equipped  and 
supervised  playgrounds  and  indoor  gymnasium 
facilities  for  employees  and  their  families,  sym- 
pathetic help  in  all  the  emergencies  which  rise 
in  the  course  of  life,  all  that  properly  enters  into 
a  sense  of  social  responsibility  and  mutual  duty 
to  be  efficient.  The  town  had  none  of  these  for 
its  citizens :  its  parks  were  a  joke,  its  playgrounds 


The  Industrial  Community  185 

a  peril,  its  schools  archaic,  its  churches  dignified, 
its  stores  selling  seconds  at  first-grade  prices. 
The  big  trade  of  the  factories  was  done  in  Chi- 
cago, and  the  chasm  between  local  citizens  and 
factory  folk  remains  unbridged.  On  one  side  is 
efficiency  and  welfare;  on  the  other  side  is  com- 
mercial self-interest,  social  inefficiency  and  no 
concerted  sentiment  and  plans  for  common  wel- 
fare. Factory  managers  are  increasingly  impa- 
tient with  community  conditions  and  citizens  are 
exasperated  with  managerial  bruskness  and  un- 
sparing criticism.  These  factories  are  in  the 
locality  but  no  part  of  the  community.  The 
community  paid  some  thirty-thousand  dollars  to 
get  the  factories  located  there.  There  is  a  per- 
manent, farm  trade  practically  untouched  by 
the  merchants  of  M —  within  five  miles  of  the  city ; 
the  farmers  know  the  city  is  there,  they  read  of 
it  in  the  papers.  Its  doctors  and  bankers  are 
known  to  most  of  the  farmers,  its  school-teachers 
known  to  some  of  the  children;  otherwise  it 
might  as  well  be  nonexistent.  The  diversion  of 
energy  and  money  to  factory  bonuses  blinded  the 
community  yet  more  to  its  own  inefficiency  and 
made  it  less  inclined  to  cultivate  a  solidarity  of 
social  and  commercial  interests  with  its  own 
natural  customers. 

K —  is  a  manufacturing  city.  It  is  also  the  cen- 
ter of  a  large  agricultural  district.  Its  factory 
owners  and  managers  are  closely  identified  with 


186     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

all  local  interests.  They  set  up  and  maintain 
systematic  cooperation  in  all  civic  interests. 
They  keep  themselves  largely  in  the  background 
using  their  brains  while  others  make  the  speeches 
and  bask  in  the  spotlight  of  publicity.  When 
local  charities  fall  into  the  hands  of  sentimental- 
ists, a  piece  of  civic  machinery  is  shoved  in  to 
take  over  this  public  work  and  good-hearted 
busybodies  scarcely  realize  how  they  happened 
to  be  shelved.  When  local  religious  conditions 
get  in  the  doldrums  another  piece  of  civic  coop- 
eration is  set  to  work,  and  religious  emotions 
and  activities  are  set  on  new  centers  without 
friction  or  public  notice.  Farmers  are  identified 
with  all  local  enterprises  and  civic  projects.  Mer- 
chants find  themselves  thrown  into  contact  with 
farm  families  both  in  town  and  out  in  the  coun- 
try— and  neither  farmers  nor  merchants  could 
tell  just  how  the  new  lines  of  association  were 
laid  and  occupied  by  them.  K — ,  in  other  words, 
is  run,  without  knowing  it,  by  industrial  leaders 
of  the  new  type,  human  beings  who  make  it  a 
point  to  know  all  other  human  beings  within  the 
range  of  influence.  It  has  no  wars  between 
workmen  and  owners,  between  factory  and  town, 
and  no  chasms  between  industrial  leaders  and 
any  other  group  of  citizens.  The  only  thing  lack- 
ing to  make  it  one  of  the  finest  cities  of  its  type 
to  be  found  on  the  continent  is  an  equally  intel- 
ligent   and    active    community    sentiment — and 


The  Industrial  Community  187 

this  is  growing.  Lack  of  natural  advantages  and 
of  artificial  helps  is  all  overcome  by  putting  fac- 
tory brains  into  community  interests  and  by 
setting  in  motion  in  the  whole  community  the 
principles  of  efficiency  and  welfare  by  which  in- 
dustries must  be  run  in  the  new  age. 

CO-OPERATION  IN  COMMUNITY  EFFICIENCY 
AND  BETTERMENT 

Cooperation  is  only  operation  with  a  Co.,  work 
done  by  united  effort,  each  worker  contributing 
a  definite  part  to  a  positive  result. 

Responsibility  is  a  concrete  idea  to  men  who 
stand  up  under  it.  Efficiency  is  a  clear  idea  to 
men  who  study  it  and  apply  it.  Betterment  is 
immensely  significant  to  men  who  are  harshly 
driven  to  learn  the  difference  between  healthy, 
cheerful,  and  happy  coworkers  and  those  who 
are  sickly,  sullen,  and  discontented.  Such  men 
have,  as  a  rule,  escaped  or  overcome  the  handi- 
cap of  an  education  based  on  bookishness,  a 
false  notion  of  human  culture  which  has  worked 
so  powerfully  to  anchor  most  of  the  citizenship 
of  America  in  a  mild  and  harmless  mediocrity. 
Men  who  succeed  in  industries  must  grapple  raw 
facts,  master  them,  dominate  and  guide  them. 
They  must  be  seers,  foreseers,  able  to  anticipate 
the  future  and  discount  it,  to  see  what  ought  to 
be  and  then  bring  it  to  pass.  They  must  possess 
the  elements  of  practical  leadership,  understand 


188     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

men,  and  know  how  to  guide  men  to  discover 
what  they  can  do  and  what  they  most  Hke  to 
do,  what  they  will  do  successfully  and  what  they 
will  not  do.  The  very  nature  of  the  age  of 
machinery  makes  men  who  are  vastly  more  than 
mere  makers  and  operators  of  machines,  it  makes 
men  who  are  makers  and  operators  of  conditions, 
of  relations  which  make  for  the  upbuilding  of 
the  finest  machines  in  the  universe,  live  human 
mechanisms. 

Industrial  leaders  then,  in  the  nature  of  the 
case,  are  the  citizens  to  whom  each  community 
and  the  aggregate  of  communities,  the  nation, 
must  confidently  look  for  wisest,  practical  guid- 
ance. America  in  the  old  age  was  a  miscel- 
laneous jumble  of  ideas  and  institutions.  War 
relentlessly  showed  us  to  ourselves.  The  "New 
Republic"  voiced  the  general  conviction:  "As  a 
matter  of  plain  fact  in  the  past  the  American 
nation  has  been  prepared  for  nothing — neither 
for  prosperity  nor  adversity,  neither  for  doing 
things  well  nor  for  doing  them  at  all,  neither  for 
peace  at  home  and  abroad  nor  for  war  at  home 
and  abroad.  If  it  is  to  be  prepared  in  the  future, 
it  must  begin  by  putting  into  the  work  of  prep- 
aration some  of  the  energy  and  determination 
and  some  of  the  disposition  to  pay  the  costs  of 
preparation  which  have  been  characteristic  of 

the propaganda."    A  nation  consisting  of 

shiftless  and  inefficient  communities,  communities 


The  Industrial  Community  189 

split  and  selfishly  sectional,  communities  with- 
out organization,  plan  or  program — such  a  nation 
is  neither  able  to  lead  the  world  nor  to  be  an 
effective  follower  in  any  plan  for  reshaping  the 
human  relations  of  all  mankind.  "Our  Amer- 
ican organization  has  actually  been  breaking 
down  at  the  mere  prospect  of  serious  complica- 
tions with  a  foreign  country."  A  machine  which 
goes  to  pieces  when  most  is  at  stake  on  its  hold- 
ing together  is  worse  than  no  machine — it  is  a 
paper  sham  built  on  bluff. 

More  than  an  obligation  of  opportunity,  then, 
confronts  those  citizens  who  know  what  organ- 
ization is,  what  it  means,  what  its  power  is,  and 
how  to  make  it.  The  new  world  and  the  place 
in  it  of  a  new  America  put  the  challenge  to  the 
patriotism  of  the  entire  citizenship,  a  challenge 
to  leadership  by  those  who  are  qualified  to  lead, 
a  challenge  to  loyalty  by  those  who  are  only 
waiting  to  be  led.  And  the  place  of  leadership 
is  not  away  off  among  imaginary  abstractions — 
the  place  is  with  those  who  work  in  the  fac- 
tories, their  wives  and  babies  and  young  folk, 
the  citizens  who  make  up  the  actual  or  potential 
social  world  in  which  both  employers  and  em- 
ployees will  find  their  chiefest  satisfactions,  the 
whole  community  which  is  to  be  guided  to  sys- 
tematic cooperation  in  working  out  the  largest 
well-being  of  all  its  human  members.  Leader- 
ship here  brings  double  reward;  leadership  di- 


190     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

rected  elsewhere  while  this  is  ignored  is  vain 
and  fruitless. 

Only  men  who  must  see  their  own  business 
years  ahead  can  see  community  conditions  for 
years  in  advance.  Only  men  who  must  see  the 
whole  of  an  industry,  from  the  first  source  of  its 
raw  material  to  the  last  market  of  its  finished 
products,  can  see  the  whole  of  a  community 
from  its  first  human  needs  to  its  last  satisfac- 
tions. Only  men  who  must  patiently  endure 
present  blunders,  in  the  certainty  that  more  ex- 
perience in  thoughtfulness  will  never  make  the 
same  blunder  twice,  can  tactfully  endure  the  zig- 
zag course  of  untrained  citizens  trying  to  make 
a  real  community  out  of  themselves.  Public 
sentiment  is  coming  to  declare  more  and  more 
clearly  that,  in  view  of  the  exigencies  of  the  age, 
those  who  can,  must;  those  who  can  lead,  ought 
to  lead;  those  who  can  see,  must  use  their  sight 
for  the  help  of  those  who  are  only  learning  to 
see  and  to  whom  men  are  as  trees  walking.  The 
burden  of  duty  joins  every  claim  of  self-interest 
in  putting  directly  before  industrial  minds  the 
leadership  in  guiding  citizens  into  a  more  com- 
pact, simpler,  saner,  less  noisy  and  smoky  and 
effusive  patriotism,  a  civic  responsibility  which 
emulates  charity  and  begins  at  home. 

Any  plan  of  community  organization  seems 
formidable  to  citizens  who  are  not  accustomed 
to  blueprints.     A  program  of  concrete  better- 


The  Industrial  Community  191 

ments  and  improvements  extending  over  a  period 
of  years  and  requiring  united  action  by  citizens 
looks  fearsome  to  folk  not  used  to  detailed  anal- 
yses and  comprehensive  specifications.  Govern- 
ment bulletins  and  university  outlines  of  commu- 
nity organization  are  about  as  plain  as  railroad 
time-tables  to  citizens  not  given  to  travel.  Ex- 
planation from  platforms  of  systematic  coopera- 
tion in  turning  out  a  finished  product  of  civic  wel- 
fare leaves  multitudes  of  citizens  looking  dazed 
and  dubious.  But  these  plans  and  programs  and 
social  organizations  of  citizens  for  concrete  tasks 
of  citizenship  are  as  absolutely  essential  to  com- 
munity efficiency  and  permanent  welfare  as  are 
blueprints  and  specifications  and  schedules  to  in- 
dustrial success.  Who  shall  consider  them  and 
lead  off  in  the  prosaic  task  of  translating  dream 
into  reality,  theory  into  fact,  mental  images  into 
factories  of  human  conduct  and  character  and 
citizenship?  Community  efficiency  may  be 
dreamed  out  almost  anywhere:  it  can  be  worked 
out  only  in  the  actual  community  with  whatever 
human  stuff  is  on  the  ground.  Community  wel- 
fare may  be  idealized  at  a  distance:  it  can  be 
realized  only  through  direct  contact  with  the 
folk  whose  well-being  is  at  stake.  Social  respon- 
sibility may  be  blueprinted  in  the  sanctum  or 
study:  it  will  be  a  tangible  affair  when  commu- 
nities of  folk  are  led  to  make  themselves  actually 
responsible  for  the  well-being  of  babies  and  chil- 


192     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

dren  and  youths  and  parents.  Neither  a  factory 
plan  nor  a  community  plan  will  run  itself. 
Neither  a  factory  nor  a  community  will  plan 
itself  except  as  brains  are  dedicated  to  the  specific 
job  of  making  plans.  Community  sentiment  will 
generate  itself  just  as  steam  will  in  a  boiler 
without  an  engineer.  Community  sentiment  un- 
organized may  be  worked  to  white  heat  but  it 
will  get  just  as  far  as  tremendous  steam  power 
turned  on  a  scrap  heap — it  will  create  lots  of 
commotion  but  no  motion. 

All  these  simple  truths  point  to  one  focus — 
the  place  of  industrial  brains  in  doing  the  most 
needed  piece  of  work  in  all  the  world  at  this 
crisis,  adopting  all  that  is  good  and  applying  all 
that  is  possible  of  the  "social-responsibility-effi- 
ciency-and-betterment"  idea  to  the  community 
at  hand. 


CHAPTER   X 

The  Agricultural  Community 

The  County  Agents*  Programs 

The  whole  world  lives  off  the  farmer:  the 
world  owes  to  farm  families  vastly  more  than 
mere  money  for  their  products. 

Congress  was  moved  to  pass  what  is  known 
as  the  Smith-Lever  Bill,  putting  the  power  of 
the  national  and  state  governments  behind  county 
organizations  of  farmers.  By  this  general  co- 
operation an  assistant  secretary  of  agriculture  is 
made  a  county  agent  or  adviser  to  the  farmers 
of  each  county  who  will  organize  themselves  as 
a  cooperating  association.  Several  hundred  of 
these  important  public  servants  were  called  into 
the  field  as  soon  as  the  national  and  state  appro- 
priations were  made  available  in  1913.  Nearly 
eleven  million  dollars  annually  will  be  devoted 
to  the  work  of  these  men  by  1923.  Their  pro- 
grams cannot  be  uniform,  naturally,  but  they 
follow  common  outlines  based  upon  the  unchang- 
ing phases  of  farm  life  and  work.  The  county 
agent  has  back  of  him  the  immense  storehouse 
of  information  gathered  during  the  past  by  the 
department  of  agriculture,  the  invaluable  infor- 
mation being  developed  by  government  and  state 
specialists  and  scientific  experimenters,  agricul- 
tural colleges  and  papers,  and  the  practical  re- 

193 


194     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

suits  being  gained  by  careful  farmers  in  all  parts 
of  the  land.  In  front  of  him  each  county  agent 
has  the  whole  needs  of  all  the  farm  families, 
owners,  and  renters  and  hired  help.  His  pro- 
grams are  the  funnels  by  which  the  intelligence 
of  the  world  is  made  immediately  available 
wherever  two  or  more  farmers  can  be  brought 
together  to  consider  their  mutual  interests. 

The  programs  follow  mainly  the  following 
outlines : 

PRIMARY  PROGRAM 

1.  Soil  Building, 

2.  Crop  Development. 

3.  Stock  Improvement. 

4.  Marketing  Products. 

5.  Farm  Accounting. 

6.  Pests  and  Parasites. 

7.  Scientific  Experiments. 

SECONDARY  PROGRa|m 

1.  Practical  Education. 

2.  Social  Intercourse. 

3.  Health  and  Beautification. 

4.  Community  Life  and  Welfare. 

Each  item  of  these  programs  deserves  ex- 
tended discussion  with  respect  to  its  relation  to 
a  general  community  and  national  plan  of  social 
responsibility  and  community  efficiency.  Rea- 
sonable limits  of  space  require  however  that  only 
a  few  of  the  items  be  briefly  noted  as  illustra- 
tions of  the  very  wide  significance  of  all  of  them. 

Soil  fertility,  for  example,  is  the  final  capital 
of  the  nation.    Soil  depletion  robs  the  nation  of 


The  Agricultural  Community  195 

its  choicest  active  wealth.  With  a  whole  fertile 
continent  at  hand  the  farmers  of  the  old  age 
had  no  need  to  bother  with  problems  of  soil 
building.  If  the  soil  of  New  England  or  New 
York  was  run  down,  depleted,  almost  beyond 
hope  of  restoration,  it  made  little  difference. 
Those  who  wanted  to  farm  could  go  west.  Dr. 
C.  G.  Hopkins,  one  of  the  leading  soil  experts 
of  the  world,  declares  that  practically  all  of  the 
so-called  profits  taken  from  American  soil  up  to 
the  present  have  been  dividends  declared  out  of 
capital  and*  not  out  of  soil  earnings.  This  proc- 
ess might  go  on  indefinitely  if  there  were  endless 
quantities  of  new  and  fertile  soil  to  be  exhausted. 
Warnings  had  been  sounded  toward  the  close, 
of  the  last  century.  They  became  more  im- 
perative during  the  first  part  of  the  present  cen- 
tury. As  soon  as  men  could  get  their  breath 
and  begin  to  look  for  their  bearings  after  August, 
1914,  warnings  concerning  methods  of  farming 
which  depleted  soils  became  positive  and  direct. 
Workers  who  spent  largely  of  their  time  and 
energies  in  rural  surroundings  unearthed  in- 
justices and  inequalities  which  compelled  them 
to  see  worked  out  again  the  impoverishment  of 
soils  and  communities  which  marked  the  middle 
ages.  Social,  educational,  and  religious  workers 
did  not  hesitate  to  emphasize  that  title  to  a  plot 
of  land  does  not  carry  with  it  the  right  to  skin 
the  soil,  destroy  its  fertility,  rob  the  community 

(14) 


196     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

and  nation  of  its  final  capital  and  leave  economic 
and  social  wreckage  behind.  They  joined  stu- 
dents in  calling  attention  to  the  vast  tracts  ot 
tillable  land  in  America  which  can  be  bought  for 
less  than  the  cost  of  the  buildings  and  improve- 
ments. They  contrasted  soils  in  Europe,  which 
have  been  farmed  for  hundreds  of  years  without 
depletion,  with  soils  in  America  which  show  the 
ravages  of  only  two  or  three  generations  of  al- 
most insane  profligacy  in  squandering  soil 
energies.  They  pointed  out  the  incredible  waste- 
fulness of  a  nation  which  permitted  ignorant 
greed  to  appropriate  common  wealth  and  leave 
dire  consequences  of  all  sorts  to  follow  their 
blundering.  National  prominence  was  given,  in 
December,  1915,  to  the  place  of  the  rural  Church 
in  community  and  national  life  and  to  the  devas- 
tations in  religion  and  all  social  life  which  are 
direct  results  of  soil  robbery.  Rather  drastic 
legislation  covering  operation  of  land  by  owners 
and  tenants  is  bound  to  be  made  effective  in  the 
immediate  future  as  an  element  of  national  and 
community  efficiency. 

Marketing  of  products  is  another  item  of  well- 
nigh  incalculable  importance  to  the  community 
as  well  as  to  individual  farmers.  Only  those  who 
have  done  it  know  the  emotions  in  a  farmer's 
soul  when  he  goes  to  the  bank  and  borrows 
money  to  pay  freight  charges  on  crops  he  has 
shipped  to  market,  or  as  he  watches  tons  upon 


The  Agricultural  Community  197 

tons  of  fruits  and  vegetables  decay  within  a  hun- 
dred miles  or  so  of  hungry  millions,  or  is  com- 
pelled to  "dump"  his  crops  at  prices  which  do 
not  cover  actual  cost  of  production,  realizing  the 
while  that  fortunes  of  produce  speculators  and 
great  financial  institutions  are  being  built  out  of 
the  obscure  increments  which  his  crops  pass 
through  after  they  leave  his  hands.  Market  con- 
ditions are  so  wholly  out  of  the  farmer's  control 
— and  the  organized  commercial  world  is  so 
generous  in  safeguarding  his  interests — that  his 
love  for  his  community  and  nation  frequently 
make  him  grit  his  teeth.  Those  who  are  won- 
dering that  political  socialism  has  shifted  from 
the  proletariat  of  factory  sections  to  the  great 
agricultural  sections  of  the  west,  southwest  and 
northwest,  would  have  much  of  their  wondering 
fully  answered  if  they  could  hear  farmers  dis- 
cuss their  helplessness  in  turning  their  crops  into 
a  fair  share  of  cash.  There  can  be  no  "effi- 
ciency" in  agricultural  sections  until  this  ele- 
ment of  general  welfare  is  adjusted.  Local  sys- 
tematic cooperation  of  farmers  for  marketing 
by  united  action  would  not  solve  all  the  diffi- 
culty— but  it  does  solve  a  great  part  of  it. 

The  cause  of  farmers'  reluctance  to  cooperate 
even  for  their  own  financial  profit  has  long  puz- 
zled a  great  many  folk  even  many  thoughtful 
farmers.  If  they  could  play  the  marketing  game 
by  united  action — but  as  a  rule  they  simply  can- 


198     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

not  play  any  game  by  united  action.  And  that 
is  the  real  secret,  as  Professor  T.  N.  Carver  has 
pointed  out,  of  their  whole  difficulty.  As  boys 
they  never  learned  to  play  group  games,  never 
had  drilled  into  their  tissues  the  habit  of  sinking 
self  in  the  team,  of  working  for  group  success 
and  not  for  individual  achievement.  They  simply 
never  learned  the  art  of  united  action.  Great 
publicity  has  been  given  to  the  most  successful 
marketing  cooperation  of  growers  in  the  country, 
the  California  Fruit  Growers*  Association. 
Those  who  have  written  of  it  give  fine  descrip- 
tions of  its  outside  characteristics.  Its  inside 
history  is  the  history  of  men  unlearning  one  set 
of  habits  and  learning — ^most  of  the  time  under 
compulsion — an  entirely  new  set  of  habits.  Part 
of  its  compulsions  were  gigantic  losses;  part  of 
them  were  the  human  powers  by  which  some 
men  compel  other  men  to  volunteer  to  do  what 
they  demand  shall  be  done.  And  it  will  continue 
to  be  so  until  supervised  play  is  a  compulsory 
part  of  the  education  of  all  boys,  till  all  of  them 
build  into  their  habits  of  thought  and  conduct 
group  action  and  not  star  performances.  The 
present  generation  of  farmers  have  it  in  their 
power  to  free  their  children  from  at  least  this 
set  of  exasperations  which  have  robbed  them  of 
millions  upon  millions  of  dollars.  Centralized 
or  consolidated  schools,  with  teachers  of  physical 
education  as  well  as  of  agriculture  and  domestic 


The  Agricultural  Community  199 

science,  can  completely  revolutionize  marketing 
conditions  by  farmers  in  less  than  a  generation. 
Sir  Horace  Plunkett  insists,  along  with  many 
other  wise  leaders,  that  farm  accounting  lies 
closest  to  the  solution  of  most  of  the  problems 
which  beset  the  individual  farmer  and  farm  com- 
munities, that  it  is  indeed  the  chief  element  in 
solving  the  rural  problem  of  the  United  States. 
Mathematical  schooling,  as  it  was  doled  out  to 
boys  and  girls  during  the  old  age,  laid  great 
stress  upon  practical  matters  like  memorizing 
the  table  of  apothecary's  weights  and  the  ex- 
traction of  the  cube  root  of  decimals.  If  young- 
sters could  memorize  abstract  symbols  enough 
to  get  as  far  as  the  problem  of  the  lights  they 
could  get  a  diploma  and  go  to  raising  corn  and 
pigs.  The  incredible  stupidity  of  much  that 
passed — and  in  some  places  still  masquerades — 
as  education  in  America  will  undoubtedly  ap- 
pear in  future  generations  as  one  of  the  Sublime 
wonders  of  human  history.  Until  very  recently 
not  one  farmer  in  multiplied  thousands  could 
know  whether  he  was  going  up  or  down  or  side- 
ways in  his  business.  He  could  not  know 
whether  any  one  of  his  cows  was  a  producer  or 
only  a  boarder.  And  none  of  the  school- 
teachers could  tell  him  how  to  find  out.  A  few 
men  who  had  been  drilled  in  practical  affairs, 
who  had  the  genius  of  systematic  accounting  in 
them,   still   intact   in    spite    of   their   schooling. 


200     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

could  and  did  measure  their  soil  cost,  labor  cost, 
investment  cost  and  were  able  to  approximate 
their  business  status.  They  discovered  that  the 
bank-book  was  not  only  a  clumsy  but  a  very 
misleading  index  of  actual  profits  and  losses. 
More  than  a  hundred  farmers  in  an  Ohio  county 
made  a  systematic  accounting  of  their  business 
of  the  preceding  year,  working  under  the  gen- 
eral direction  of  the  county  agent.  Although 
the  county  is  one  of  the  best  agricultural  coun- 
ties in  the  state,  some  of  the  farmers  were 
astounded  to  discover  that  they  had  actually 
made  a  loss  of  about  fifteen  hundred  dollars  dur- 
ing the  year.  Only  one  or  two  had  made  that 
much  profit.  The  great  majority  of  those  who 
made  any  profit  showed  a  profit  of  about  ten 
dollars  per  week  in  return  for  their  labor. 
Churches  with  the  new  social  ideal,  many  con- 
solidated or  centralized  schools  and  many  social 
centers  have  been  providing  courses  in  syste- 
matic farm  accounting,  and  all  the  county  agents, 
of  course,  are  trying  to  bring  in  a  new  era  of 
business  management  by  the  business  men  who 
run  the  farms  of  the  land.  The  effect  of  this 
new  development  upon  ideals  of  community  effi- 
ciency and  social  responsibility  will  inevitably 
be  of  vast  advantage.  The  importance  to  each 
farmer  of  his  monthly  and  yearly  statement  of 
assets  and  liabilities  cannot  fail  to  put  away  to 
the  front  the  far-reaching  importance  of  a  contin- 


The  Agricultural  Community  201 

uous  inventory  of  the  community's  assets  and  lia- 
bilities, a  survey  of  its  resources  kept  up  to  date. 

The  ramifications  of  all  the  items  in  the  pri- 
mary program  of  county  agents  reach  into  all 
phases  of  community  efficiency.  But  it  is  in  the 
secondary  program  that  the  organized  power  of 
national  and  state  governments  is  brought  to 
bear  most  directly  with  local  associations  in 
shaping  ideals  of  social  responsibility  and  of  con- 
crete plans  for  community  efficiency  and  better- 
ment. And  of  all  places  in  the  world  rural  dis- 
tricts need  to  be  roused  and  put  upon  a  basis  of 
higher  social  cooperation. 

Millions  of  slum  children  in  cities  have  better 
provisions  for  their  health,  social  life  and  prac- 
tical education  than  do  most  of  the  country  chil- 
dren in  America,  even  in  sections  of  agricultural 
wealth  and  culture.  For  sheer  social  poverty 
the  slums  of  cities  are  not  to  be  compared  with 
country  school  districts  in  every  state  in  the 
union  and  province  of  the  dominion.  Social  set- 
tlements, neighborhood  houses,  commons  and  all 
sorts  of  helpful  institutions  are  promoted  by 
private  generosity  and  public  zeal  in  the  poorer 
sections  of  cities.  The  discovery  and  rapid  ex- 
tension of  play  life  as  related  to  physical  health 
and  moral  education  have  made  equipped  and 
supervised  playgrounds  more  numerous  than 
schoolhouses,  and  city  schoolhouses  are  com- 
monly used  for  social  centers  and  night-school 


202     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

activities.  Such  privileges  are  as  rare  in  country 
districts  as  they  were  in  cities  fifty  years  ago. 
The  one-room  country  school-building  has  been 
pilloried  by  educators  and  health  officials.  It 
represents  the  stubbornest  waste  of  school- 
money  and  energy  to  be  found  anywhere  in 
America.  Taxpayers  pay  as  much  for  thirty  to 
fifty  minutes  of  a  teacher's  time  as  they  would 
have  to  pay  for  full  five  hours  of  adapted  teach- 
ing in  a  centralized  or  consolidated  school.  The 
custom  of  putting  rural  education  under  the  di- 
rection of  politically  elected  superintendents 
instead  of  educationally  selected  and  appointed 
supervisors  may  be,  as  Professor  Ellwood  P. 
Cubberly  insists,  in  "The  Improvement  of  Rural 
Schools,"  a  large  part  of  the  trouble;  the  rest 
of  it  may  be  taken  care  of  by  public  money  set 
apart  to  supplement  the  niggardly  school- 
revenues  of  backward  districts.  The  proper 
education  of  all  its  citizens  is  a  state  concern,  of 
national  importance,  and  ought  not  to  be  left 
subject  to  the  inabilities,  real  or  fancied,  of  in- 
dividual school  districts,  townships  or  of  polit- 
ical county  officials.  Much  agitation  and  edu- 
cation of  public  sentiment  needs  to  be  done  to 
aid  this  item  of  the  county  agent's  program. 

It  can  be  described  as  nothing  less  than  im- 
mensely unfortunate  that  the  religious  dissen- 
sions of  past  ages  have  made  such  cleavages 
among  citizens  that  county  agents  cannot  be- 


The  Agricultural  Community  203 

come  active  in  the  reconstruction  of  religion  and 
religious  forces  in  rural  districts.  But  these  civil 
officers,  like  school-teachers,  must  keep  hands  off 
of  churches  and  religious  conditions  except  in 
their  capacity  as  private  citizens. 

The  secondary  program  of  county  agents  is 
inherently  weak  in  one  other  respect.  They  can 
do  much  to  help  farmers  and  their  families  to 
discover,  create  and  enjoy  larger  and  better 
social  life  and  intercourse  among  themselves. 
But  this  is  not  enough.  The  American  nation 
can  no  more  endure  two  distinct  civilizations, 
city  and  country,  than  it  could  endure  half  slave 
and  half  free.  Distinctions  between  town  folk 
and  country  folk,  between  the  children  of  city 
folk  and  of  farmers,  are  as  preposterous  as  the 
proposed  cleavage  between  children  choosing 
vocational  education  and  those  choosing  class- 
ical culture,  a  project  fought  bitterly  by  public 
school-teachers  and  educators  generally  when  it 
was  proposed  before  the  Illinois  legislature  in 
1915.  Equality  of  educational  opportunity,  a 
cherished  principle  of  American  education,  im- 
plies an  equality  of  social  opportunity  which  is 
not  yet  achieved.  Country  folk  have  not  sought 
it  and  town  folk  have  not  tried,  as  a  rule,  to  offer 
it.  /  The  sense  of  difference  makes  lasting  im- 
pression on  youthful  minds  and  does  leave  un- 
fortunate permanent  results  in  American  citizen- 
ship.   County  agents  have  already  done  much  to 


204     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

bring  farmers  into  the  membership  of  commer- 
cial clubs  and  chambers  of  commerce.  But  this 
is  not  enough.  The  need  is  far  deeper  and  wider 
than  the  commercial  contact  of  farmers  and  mer- 
chants. Towns  and  cities,  especially  citizens,  in 
county-seat  cities,  must  have  their  social  re- 
sponsibility for  all  contiguous  rural  districts 
brought  plainly,  forcefully  and  repeatedly  to  their 
attention.  Little  profit  comes  from  emphasizing 
rural  backwardness  and  social  privations  so  long 
as  town  ostriches  of  both  sexes  hide  themselves 
in  their  own  little  functions  and  refuse  to  hear 
or  heed  the  mute  appeals  which  come  to  them 
from  the  neighborhood  just  outside.  Rural  social 
squalor  is  not  the  fault  of  the  folk  who  are  doing 
the  best  they  know  how  in  the  midst  of  a  misfit 
situation — that  squalor  is  the  condemnation  of 
those  nearest  at  hand  who  know  better — ^but 
don't  care.  Social  selfishness  in  town  folk  might 
not  be  so  conspicuous  were  it  not  that  some  live 
communities  in  different  states  have  broken 
through  this  wall  of  division  and  set  up  fine  and 
fruitful  social  intercourse  with  practically  every 
family  in  the  county — and  this  in  populous 
counties.  The  fact  that  it  is  being  so  happily 
done  shows  that  it  can  be  done.  But  the  urge 
of  combined  commercial  and  social  motives  has 
not  yet  been  in  any  general  way  brought  home 
to  the  only  responsible  parties,  the  women  and 
men  who  can  knit  town  life  and  country  life  into 


The  Agricultural  Community  205 

a  beautiful  fabric  of  community  organization  and 
national  solidarity. 

RETIRED    FARMER-CITIZEN 

He  is  a  problem  to  himself,  to  the  town  he 
lives  in  and  to  the  farm  he  left  behind  him. 

The  farmer  who  sells  out  and  quits  being  a 
farmer  when  he  moves  into  town  is  one  kind  of 
a  citizen.  He  may  be  one  of  the  best,  provided 
he  keeps  busy  at  something  worth  while  and 
don't  become  a  town  loafer.  The  farmer  who 
rents  his  farm,  goes  into  town  and  lives  from  his 
rentals  and  accumulations,  unless  these  are  un- 
commonly large,  is  quite  another  sort  of  citizen, 
quite  frequently  one  of  the  worst  obstacles  to 
progressive  community  life.  No  other  one  factor 
has  done  so  much,  perhaps,  to  paralyze  com- 
munity enterprise,  retard  community  improve- 
ments and  to  imperil  the  whole  rural  civilization 
of  the  nation  as  has  the  misunderstanding,  by 
himself  and  other  citizens,  of  the  position  and 
situation  of  the  retired  farmer-citizen. 

His  case  seems  simple  and  easily  stated.  He 
does  not  now  have  to  work  hard  for  a  living. 
Why  shouldn't  he  quit  work?  If  he  wants  to 
leave  the  isolation  of  the  farm  and  find  congenial 
cronies  in  town,  why  shouldn't  he?  If  he  wants 
to  build  a  home  in  town,  ought  not  the  town  to 
welcome  his  coming?  If  interest  and  rentals  are 
enough  for  him  and  his  wife,  whose  business  is 


206     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

it  if  they  want  to  spend  their  own  money  in  their 
own  time  and  way?  If  he  opposes  all  public  im- 
provements on  the  ground  that  taxes  are  already 
all  he  can  pay,  who  is  to  stop  him?.  When  he 
insists,  "We  don't  need  sewers,  paved  streets, 
garbage  incinerators,  school  and  municipal  play- 
grounds, ample  school  equipment  for  domestic 
science,  manual  arts,  agriculture,  music  and 
other  foolishness,"  and  that  no  sane  citizen 
would  think  of  getting  such  folderols  unless  he 
had  plenty  of  money  ready  in  hand  or  knew 
where  he  could  put  his  hand  on  it  at  once — ^why 
he  is  perfectly  true  and  right  according  to  life 
as  he  has  learned  its  duties.  Who,  then,  should 
call  him  the  poorest  sort  of  citizen  to  be  found 
outside  public  institutions? 

The  deans  of  some  prominent  agricultural 
colleges  say  that  the  progress  of  scientific  farm- 
ing and  the  beginnings  of  a  wholesome  stay-on- 
the-farm  movement  make  it  reasonably  sure  that 
the  nation  is  suffering  its  last  infliction  of  this 
sort.  Others  as  intimately  concerned  with  rural 
interests  fervently  wish  they  could  believe  this 
to  be  true.  The  retired-farmer-citizen  is  a  factor 
to  be  reckoned  with  at  the  present  in  almost 
every  city  and  town  in  the  agricultural  parts  of 
the  nation.  Abuse  of  him  is  fruitless.  It  only 
hardens  his  shell.  Arguments  are  vain.  He  en- 
joys discussion  and  has  plenty  of  time  to  think 
up  new  justifications  and  keep  the  game  going. 


The  Agricultural  Community  207 

To  kill  him  before  the  Lord  sends  for  him  is  full 
of  perilous  consequences.  He's  here.  He  lives 
long.  He  will  vote  against  progress  till  the 
end — most  of  him  will. 

Few  folk  in  town  or  country  stop  to  realize 
that  town  life  and  country  life  are  based  on  en- 
tirely different  principles  and  that  success  on 
the  farm  works  all  the  time  to  unfit  the  farmer 
for  successful  town  citizenship;  and  that  private 
finance  and  public  finance,  are  also  built  upon 
directly  opposite  principles.  To  see  both  of 
these  facts  clearly  helps  greatly  to  understand, 
and  therefore  to  solve,  the  retired  farmer-citizen 
problem. 

Farmers  are  the  most  dependent  of  all  citizens. 
Those  who  know  farming  only  from  car  win- 
dows and  auto  rides  are  always  talking  about  the 
beautiful  independence  of  farm  life.  Men  in  no 
other  vocation  have  to  face  so  many  conditions 
so  entirely  beyond  their  control  and  so  absolutely 
determining  success  or  failure  financially.  Ex- 
tremes of  weather,  all  kinds  of  old  and  new  in- 
sects and  all  the  forty  thousand  fungi  which 
attack  vegetable  and  animal  life,  markets  and 
transportation — the  farmer  works  always  on  a 
precarious  margin  between  certain  expense  and 
uncertain  income.  More  than  in  any  other  voca- 
tion men  who  run  farms  must  constantly  be 
answering  the  questions.  Can  I  get  on  without 
it?    Can  I  make  it  turn  back  more  than  its  cost? 


208     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

Can  I  pay  for  it  now?  If  they  fail  to  guess  right 
in  answering  such  questions  someone  else  will 
be  running  that  farm  without  the  farmer's  con- 
sent. One  who  cannot  be  constantly  conserv- 
ative cannot  be  a  permanently  successful  farmer. 
"  Farmers  have  little  use  for  theories  of  social 
utility  and  public  finance.  If  a  thing  is  abso- 
lutely necessary — and  money  in  bank  to  pay  for 
it  is  a  condition  of  its  necessity — the  farmer  can- 
not help  ignoring  the  weight  of  what  others  want 
and  are  willing  to  pay  for  during  the  next  twenty 
to  fifty  years,  and  putting  to  the  fore  his  in- 
grained habits  of  measuring  the  cost  of  public 
goods  in  terms  of  private  wants  and  costs.  He 
always  had  to  keep  income  up  and  expenses 
down  to  the  lowest  point.  Now  with  income  at 
a  standstill  and  expenses  going  up  and  citizens 
clamoring  for  more  improvements  and  better- 
ments— it  is  enough  to  make  retired  farmers 
swear,  and  it  does  occasionally.  Town  life  has 
almost  none  of  the  hazards  of  farm  life.  All  the 
resources  of  the  tax  unit  are  its  backing.  If  any 
improvement  is  socially  useful  the  community 
ought  to  get  it  immediately  and  spread  the  cost 
out  over  as  many  years  as  may  be  expedient. 
High  taxes  judiciously  spent  are  the  price  of 
community  life.  Low  taxes  spent  only  for  bare 
necessities  are  the  rule  in  farm  life — and  country 
schoolhouses  show  it.  In  short,  when  men  leave 
the  farm  for  the  town  they  leave  one  life  which 


The  Agricultural  Community  209 

they  know  intimately  for  one  they  know  little 
about  and  many  of  them  cannot  and  will  not 
learn:  they  did  not  learn  team-work  as  boys, 
young  men  or  men — how  can  a  man  be  born 
again  when  he  is  old?  The  idea  of  measuring 
intangible  social  satisfactions  over  against 
higher  taxes  is  not  in  their  world.  To  spend 
five  thousand  to  six  thousand  dollars  of  public 
money  annually  en  free  lectures  and  concerts 
and  entertainments,  as  is  dene  in  Houston,  Texas, 
looks  to  groups  of  farmers  like  a  long  step 
toward  civic  insanity.  A  man  who  has  made  a 
pronounced  success  in  one  career  cannot  lift 
himself  by  sheer  act  of  will  into  an  entirely  un- 
like set  of  principles,  policies  and  plans  of  action, 
and  be  quite  at  home  from  the  first 

Two  plans  have  grown  up  within  recent  years 
to  help  bridge  the  chasm  between  town  life  and 
country  life.  Courses  of  popular  lectures  in  prac- 
tical citizenship,  discussing  the  fundamental 
principles  of  rural  and  urban  life,  and  doing  it 
in  a  thoroughly  enjoyable  way,  are  now  avail- 
able in  nearly  all  of  the  states.  These  courses 
are  specifically  designed  to  lift  the  whole  level  of 
community  sentiment  to  higher  planef  of  co- 
operation and  to  multiply  the  appreciative  con- 
tacts with  life  which  are  the  soul  of  culture.  Mr. 
Ford's  inventions  have  helped  greatly  to  make 
the  other  plan  a  huge  success — to  bring  farms  so 
close  to  all  the  advantages  of  towns  that  the  new 


210     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

homes  are  being  built  on  the  old  farms  and  all 
the  joys  and  pleasures,  conveniences  and  com- 
forts, privileges  and  opportunities  of  both  town 
and  country  are  immediately  at  hand  for  those 
who  ought  to  quit  hard  work  and  turn  its  grind- 
ing tasks  over  to  hands  not  yet  knobbed  and 
weather-beaten.  Combination  of  these  plans  is 
bringing  into  many  parts  of  America  a  new  spirit 
of  cooperation  and  of  social  unification. 

TENANTRY   AND   ABSENTEE   LANDLORDISM 

Problems  of  country  life  in  districts  abandoned 
by  owners  are  graver  than  community  problems 
where  the  owners  have  gone.  Conditions  much 
like  mediaeval  feudalism  have  appeared  in  Amer- 
ica, a  landed  aristocracy  and  serfs  too  wretchedly 
poor  to  be  even  valuable  appurtenances  to  the 
soil.  If  these  conditions  fell  only  upon  men  they 
might  get  up  and  get  out  between  days.  The 
full  weight  of  the  burdens  fall  on  babies  and 
children  and  women. 

Farmers  leaving  for  towns  think  of  conditions 
as  they  were.  They  seldom  realize  clearly  what 
an  entirely  different  situation  confronts  tenants, 
with  no  old-time  neighbors.  Leases  are  so 
drawn  that  landlords  often  unwittingly  do  grave 
injustice  to  tenants,  condemning  them  to  accept 
most  meager  educational  facilities  for  their  chil- 
dren and  still  more  barren  religious  and  social 
privileges    for    themselves    and    their    families. 


The  Agricultural  Community  211 

Principal  P.  T.  Forsyth  emphasized  the  diffi- 
culty, years  ago,  which  one  who  loves  his  fellows 
found  in  trying  to  keep  down  hot  indignation 
when  walking  through  parts  of  cities  and  noted 
the  waxen-faced  and  weazened  babies  condemned 
by  society  to  early  death  or  abnormal  life.  He 
ought  to  go  out  into  the  social  deserts  in  the 
rich  farm  districts  of  populous  states  in  free 
America  and  mingle  for  a  time  with  the  starved 
and  sodden  child  minds,  with  the  wistfulness 
of  young  women  who  have  not  yet  been  starved 
into  social  insensibility  and  who  still  hope  for 
better  days  for  the  little  ones  "when  John  gets 
ahead."  Young  farmers  of  self-respect,  religious, 
and  worthily  ambitious,  have  had  all  their  self- 
respect  and  religion  and  ambitions  hammered 
out  of  them  by  landlords  whose  Church  mem- 
bership is  unquestioned  and  who  n^ay  not  con- 
sciously have  joined  the  ranks  of  inhuman  driv- 
ers of  fellow  human  beings.  Small  owners  of 
heavily  mortgaged  farms  are  in  nearly  as  deplor- 
able conditions  and  it  will  be  many  years  before 
the  new  rural  credits  privileges  reach  down  to 
where  they  are  most  urgently  needed. 

Remedial  legislation  has  already  been  pro- 
posed. Landlords  may  think  it  drastic.  But  the 
nation,  the  state,  and  the  community  have  rights 
in  the  persons  of  present  and  future  citizens  as 
well  as  in  the  fertility  of  the  soil.  Justice  seems 
to  dictate  that  tenants  shall  have  full  value  of  all 


212     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

improvements  they  put  into  the  soil  or  upon  the 
surface  of  it;  that  they  shall  have  long-term 
leases;  that  tenants  shall  have  it  made  possible 
for  them  to  buy  land  leased  out  of  the  labor 
income  from  that  land.  The  Country  Life  Com- 
mission, appointed  by  President  Roosevelt,  un- 
covered part  of  the  need  and  drew  national  atten- 
tion to  the  problem.  Many  social  and  religious 
organizations  are  following  up  the  work.  Steps 
to  relieve  the  oppressions  now  resting  upon 
many  rural  sections  are  sure  to  be  urged  upon 
Congress  and  Legislatures.  Provisions  are 
already  under  way  to  provide  teachers  of  domes- 
tic science  and  agriculture  in  centralized  schools 
by  national  and  state  aid.  These  teachers,  work- 
ing twelve  months  in  each  year  instead  of  by 
short  school  terms,  along  with  the  active  help  of 
county  agents  have  proved  the  wisdom  of  put- 
ting the  organized  power  of  the  nation  and  state 
behind  the  weakly-organized  power  of  rural 
communities.  Physical  and  moral  stability  of 
state  and  nation  are  involved  in  the  welfare  of 
its  remote  and  relatively  helpless  citizens.  An 
efficient  nation  cannot  allow  any  of  its  citizens 
to  be  condemned,  through  no  fault  of  their  own, 
to  be  imperiled  by  social  destitution  and  spiritual 
barbarism.  Local  school  revenues  can  be  so  pro- 
vided that  the  incidence  of  taxes  will  fall  on  the 
soil  income  of  landlords  and  not  on  the  labor 
income  of  tenants.    The  right  of  absentee  land- 


The  Agricultural  Community  213 

lords  to  shirk  responsibility  for  the  social,  domes- 
tic, and  educational  welfare  of  tenants  is  being 
openly  and  vigorously  challenged,  as  at  the  open 
sessions  of  the  Commission  on  the  Rural  Church 
and  Country  Life,  in  December,  1915.  The  con- 
solidated school  and  the  rural  Church  with  new 
social  vision  appear  to  be  the  most  promising 
agencies  of  a  new  day  in  tenant  farm  life. 
TOWN  AND  RURAL  SOCIAL  CO-OPERATION 
The  size  of  the  community,  as  citizens  gener- 
ally are  learning,  is  not  measured  by  the  imag- 
inary political  lines  which  make  political  units. 
Political  and  geographical  boundaries  are  only 
for  purposes  of  taxation  and  suffrage.  A  com- 
munity is  as  big  as  the  reach  of  the  relations 
which  are  shared  in  common. )  Some  minds  find 
it  not  easy  to  forget  geography  and  politics 
when  they  use  the  word  "community"  and  to 
think  only  of  relations.  But  minds  which  have 
to  stretch  to  think  in  this  way  are  undergoing 
exercise  which  is  good  for  the  soul.  People 
may  live  near  each  other  as  everybody  knows 
and  yet  have  nothing  in  common  but  the  air 
they  breathe  and  the  certainty  of  death.  A  local- 
ity might  be  thickly  populated  and  yet  be  no 
community  if  the  people  were  hermits  or  closely 
buttoned-up  folk.  To  become  a  community  such 
a  locality  would  have  to  w;itness  tremendous 
(social  conversion  or  be  repopulated  by  people 
\  who  have  juice  and  not  pith  in  their  souls. 


214     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

Town  folk  have  a  duty  to  make  a  community 
out  of  themselves.  "To  scientize  acquaintance" 
is  the  published  purpose  of  one  unique  organiza- 
tion in  America  and  it  ought  to  be  the  avowed 
purpose  of  all  citizens.  Unhappily  for  everyone 
a  very  superficial  acquaintance  commonly  passes 
for  knowing  one's  neighbors.  "You  know  me 
more  in  one  hour,"  declared  a  citizen  to  a  vis- 
itor, "than  any  business  man  in  this  town,  al- 
though I  have  been  among  them  in  business  for 
ten  years."  The  motto  adopted  at  Trenton, 
Missouri,  "Get  acquainted  with  your  neighbor; 
you  might  like  him,"  will  work  social  wonders 
in  any  locality  where  it  is  made  a  working  fact. 
It  is  a  matter  of  very  common  observation  that 
few  citizens  actually  know  their  own  town  or 
more  than  a  very  few  of  the  folk  whom  they 
easily  call  by  name.  Knowledge  of  persons  and 
personalities  comes  only  by  close  association  in 
playing  together  or  working  together.  Now,  in 
this  new  age,  there  is  especial  duty  resting  on 
all  citizens  to  make  communities  of  themselves 
by  multiplying  the  lines  of  association  and  inti- 
mate acquaintance.  Immediately  confronting 
citizens  who  set  out  to  get  acquainted  with  their 
neighbors,  to  make  themselves  likable  and  find 
out  all  likable  traits  in  their  neighbors,  is  the 
age-old  question,  "Who,  then,  is  my  neighbor?" 
And  there  is  only  the  same  age-old  answer,  the 


The  Agricultural  Community  215 

fellow  who  needs  you  even  if  he  would  curse  you 
for  helping  him. 

The  economic  urge  of  material  prosperity  is 
now  driving  multitudes  of  citizens  into  many 
new  associations  and  impelling  them  to  form 
many  new  and  close  relations  with  other  citizens. 
Commercial  ties  are  drawing  business  men  in 
town  and  on  farms  into  closer  relations.  A 
world  of  new  public  interests  is  opened  and  need 
for  frequent  discussion  of  matters  of  public  wel- 
fare is  pressing  throughout  America.  Town  folk, 
if  they  only  knew  it,  actually  need  the  friendship 
and  personal  support  of  country  folk  even  more 
than  farmers  and  their  families  need  them.  Even 
in  some  tenant  districts  of  America  the  tenant 
farmers  are  better  farmers  and  more  compan- 
ionable citizens  than  the  original  owners  who 
have  gone  into  the  towns  to  live.  And  even  the 
least  bookish  and  most  uncouth  farmers  have 
to  use  more  brains  in  their  daily  work  and  use 
all  their  brains  all  the  time  to  succeed  in  their 
business  more  than  do  the  vast  majority  of  folk 
who  live  and  work  in  towns  and  cities.  They 
may  not  scrupulously  observe  all  the  niceties  of 
artificial  social  proprieties,  wear  dress  suits  and 
decollete  gowns  at  their  social  functions,  or  dis- 
sipate like  ladies  and  gentlemen.  But  the  folk 
who  have  in  mind  only  the  "Reubs"  of  cartoons, 
when  they  think  of  country  neighbors,  have  much 


216     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

need  to  cultivate  intimate  friendly  relations  with 
many  farm  families. 

County  seat  cities  are  the  legal  and  fiscal  cen- 
ters of  county  communities.  Most  county  seats 
are  known  as  "dead"  towns,  self-satisfied,  self- 
contained,  self-satisfying.  Their  citizens  are 
frequently  visionless,  nerveless,  doless.  The 
presence  of  a  courthouse  and  a  jail  seems  to  have 
a  paralyzing  effect  on  commercial  enterprise  and 
social  energies.  The  group  of  citizens  which 
ought  to  be  the  responsible  social  and  educa- 
tional and  religious  stewards  for  all  the  people 
of  the  county  most  frequently  content  themselves 
with  their  own  nice  respectabilities.  One  city, 
already  mentioned,  is  conspicuous  among  the 
county  seats  which  have  pioneered  the  new  age 
in  cultivating  the  sense  of  social  responsibility 
and  community  efficiency  throughout  the  sur- 
rounding county. 

Social  ties  between  town  folk  and  farm  fam- 
ilies were  planned  for  and  developed.  Seventy- 
five  boys  from  farms  were  guests  of  business 
and  professional  folk  in  town  during  the  sessions 
of  a  Farmers'  Institute.  One  young  fellow 
walked  thirteen  miles  through  a  blizzard  so  as 
not  to  disappoint  the  merchant  whose  guest  he 
had  promised  to  be.  Large  automobile  parties 
of  town  folk  accepted  invitations  for  two  even- 
ings of  each  week  during  an  entire  season  to 
go  out  to  various  points  in  the  county.    Part  of 


The  Agricultural  Community  217 

the  conditions  of  accepting  such  invitations 
were  that  suppers  should  be  served  at  conven- 
ient places  and  the  town  folk  would  pay  regular 
prices  for  meals  so  served;  that  the  suppers 
should  be  followed  by  informal  social  greetings 
and  conversations ;  the  social  hour  to  be  followed 
by  a  program  in  which  contributions  to  good  fel- 
lowship should  be  made  by  everybody  who  could 
and  would  take  part.  Similar  festivities  were 
planned  for  in  town.  A  clubhouse  for  impartial 
use  of  town  and  country  members  aided  greatly 
to  obliterate  social  distinctions.  Such  commu- 
nities are  not  bothered  by  mail-order  competi- 
tion or  any  other  disruptive  force.  A  continu- 
ance of  such  social  interchanges  during  the 
lifetime  of  one  generation  will  make  Grundy 
County,  Missouri,  a  marked  community  in  the 
heart  of  the  nation — and  like  systematic  coopera- 
tion for  definite  social  ends  will  make  any  other 
city  and  county  worthily  renowned,  for  it  is  pre- 
cisely such  human  groundwork  as  this  on  which 
the  community  life  of  the  future  must  be  built. 
Rural  communities  are  not  wholly  dependent, 
fortunately,  on  the  initiative  and  enterprise  of 
neighboring  county  seats.  Had  the  residents  of 
the  Hesperia  community  waited  for  social  im- 
pulses to  reach  out  to  them  from  Hart  and 
White  Cloud  they  would  never  have  become 
noted  for  their  rich  community  life  nor  have 
made  themselves  a  benediction  to  both  Oceana 


v" 


218     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

and  Newago  counties  in  Michigan.  Similar  com- 
munities are  springing  up  in  many  states  and 
putting  to  shame  the  social  selfishness,  the  snob- 
bish indifference  and  unconcern  of  town  folk 
which  would  be  social  indecency  if  it  were  will- 
ful and  not  the  result  of  thoughtlessness.  "But 
evil  is  wrought  by  want  of  thought,  as  well  as 
by  want  of  heart." 

In  one  of  the  wealthy  counties  of  central  Illi- 
nois several  rural  Churches  in  one  district  have 
gone  out  of  business  during  recent  years,  and 
several  more  are  going.  Away  out  in  the  open 
country,  more  than  a  mile  from  the  nearest  dwell- 
ing, an  enterprising  native  built  an  ordinary  and 
plain  dance  hall.  The  only  advertising  he  did 
was  to  post  a  notice  of  the  "opening."  He  recov- 
ered the  whole  of  his  investment  in  an  incredibly 
short  time  and  still  ministers  to  the  social  hunger 
of  the  young  folk  of  the  vicinity.  Meanwhile 
the  Churches  in  the  county  seat  are  losing  hold 
on  most  of  the  young  people  who  find  nothing 
challenging  them  to  serve  humanity  in  any  prac- 
tical way.  Which  thing  is  both  fact  and  alle- 
gory. ^  *» 

This  social  hunger  which  moves  the  world  is 
what  is  sometimes  called  "instinct  for  compan- 
ionship with  kind."  It  would  be  refreshing  if 
local  leaders  of  social  life  and  sentiment  would 
grip  some  of  these  universal  characteristics  of 
mankind  and  work  out  social  relations  on  these 


The  Agricultural  Community  219 

lines,  instead  of  going  ahead  blindly  and  then 
deplore  failure  and  repeated  lack  of  success. 
Children  require  and  seek  companionship  with 
other  children.  Young  folk  require  social  con- 
tacts with  young  folk.  Women  have  social  ties 
with  women,  and  men  with  men.  According  to 
female  standards  men  are  socially  uncivilized  if 
not  uncivilizable,  even  if  Heinrich  Schurtz  is 
right  in  insisting  that  human  society  had  its 
beginning  not  in  the  family  but  in  the  associa- 
tion of  men.  The  ties  of  companionship  with 
others  of  like  kind  are  immeasurably  stronger 
than  the  purely  artificial  bases  on  which  group 
life  is  so  often  sought  to  be  grounded.  There  can 
be  no  question  that  groups  formed  within  the 
one  common  bond  of  citizenship,  regardless  of 
all  sectional  and  sectarian  divisions,  groups 
formed  of  men,  women,  youths  and  children  is 
the  kind  of  community  society  of  which  the 
American  nation  is  to  be  mainly  formed.  Na- 
tional ideals,  then,  as  well  as  the  moral  and 
material  prosperity  of  the  locality,  are  involved 
in  the  growth  of  a  richer,  closer,  and  more  enjoy- 
able association  of  town  folk  and  country  folk, 
of  neighbors  all  in  each  distinct  community. 
^  Where  the  question  has  been  directly  raised  to 
groups  of  citizens,  what,  in  your  judgment,  does 
your  community  most  need  to  make  it  an  ideal 
one  of  its  kind?  The  first  answer  from  thought- 
ful minds  invariably  is,  "A  more  active  spirit  of 


220     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

cooperation."  This  spirit  can  come  only  from 
a  habit  of  playing  together  or  of  working  to- 
gether ;  it  is  created  by  conduct  and  is,  in  turn,  a 
creator  of  character.  It  cannot  be  willed  into 
being  as  a  thing  apart. 

Farmers  and  their  wives  have,'  on  their  part,  a 
work  of  initiative.  Thousands  of  towns  and 
small  cities  are  having  the  spirit  of  cooperation 
literally  crushed  out  of  them  by  the  ruthless  self- 
ishness of  farmers  in  the  surrounding  territory. 
The  grange  or  the  gleaners  is  a  force  far  more 
powerful  than  individual  farmers  realize  to  make 
or  break  the  spirit  of  the  town  which  is  their 
natural  center.  One  successful  farmer  com- 
plained, "We  have  to  sit  outside  and  see  our 
town  die  out  for  lack  of  enterprise  and  commu- 
nity spirit."  He  did  not  realize  then  what  he 
learned  later,  that  the  several  hundred  members 
of  the  grange  regularly  diverted  so  large  a  part 
of  their  trade  to  out-of-town  points  that  local 
merchants  could  not  make  a  decent  living  from 
their  trade.  Men  who  face  bankruptcy  and  are 
at  their  wit's  end  to  make  commercial  ends  meet 
are  not  likely  to  be  effusively  social  or  enthu- 
siastic in  promoting  public  enterprises.  A  few 
wisely  placed  invitations  by.  farmers'  wives  to 
merchants  and  their  families  for  a  friendly  visit 
at  farmhomes,  a  few  conferences  of  friendly  and 
informal  nature  between  purchasing  agents  or 
business   committees   of  farmers'   organizations 


The  Agricultural  Community  221 

with  local  merchants  would  actually  work  toward 
the  commercial  and  social  salvation  of  many 
rural  towns  and  cities  which  at  this  moment  are 
on  the  verge  of  starvation. 

Farmers  are  now  widely  recognized  as  busi- 
ness men  no  less  than  bankers  and  merchants. 
The  rapidly  socialized  increase  in  farm  values 
puts  a  great  number  of  farmers  in  the  forefront 
of  business  interests  in  their  localities.  It  may 
have  been,  in  the  old  age,  enough  for  farmers 
to  be  responsible  for  the  successful  conduct  of 
their  own  private  agricultural  enterprises.  Now 
they  are  responsible  for  all  the  duties  and  obliga- 
tions which  fall  upon  any  class  of  business  men, 
the  promotion  of  all  the  interests  which  mark 
civilized  society.  Among  these  interests  are 
those  of  their  own  natural  trading  center,  the 
rural  town  or  city.  Its  prosperity  is  their  gain. 
Its  general  run-down-at-the-heelativeness  is  their 
loss  and  shame.  The  cultivation  of  productive 
social  relations  is  their  duty  fully  as  much  as  it 
is  of  merchants  and  town  folk.  Public  interests, 
public  welfare,  public  sharing  in  all  available  in- 
struments of  culture,  social  responsibility  and  com- 
munity efficiency  are  their  civic  duty,  the  practical 
patriotism  without  which  waving  flags  and  noisy 
horns  are  worse  than  meaningless.  The  habitual 
conduct  of  citizens  by  communities  is  the  only 
character  of  the  American  nation.  And  the  eyes  of 
the  world  are  hungrily  turned  toward  America. 


CHAPTER  XI 

The  Social  Community 

Gommunity  House  Activities 

A  new  piece  of  architecture  has  come  into 
being  within  recent  years.  It  is  no  more  elab- 
orate for  its  purposes,  and  no  more  costly  in 
proportion  to  community  wealth  than  the  town 
halls  in  the  early  settlements  of  pioneer  days. 
The  modern  building  has  been  made  necessary 
by  human  necessities  and  needs.  Private  initia- 
tive and  social  demands  have  moved  municipali- 
ties to  build  for  to-day  and  to-morrow.  State 
Legislatures  have  passed  enabling  ^cts,  making 
it  possible  for  communities  to  levy  taxes  to  build 
and  to  maintain  municipal  coliseums  or  com- 
munity houses  or  social  center  structures.  In 
localities  where  community  sentiment  has  been 
created  in  advance  these  community  houses  have 
proved  to  be  an  unqualified  benefit.  Where  the 
community  house  has  been  thrust  in  ahead  of 
intelligent  social  sentiment  in  the  locality,  it  has 
proved  to  be  of  only  qualified  value,  usually  no 
more  than  a  municipal  dance  hall. 

Social  sentiment  needs  to  be  crystallized.  It 
is  volatile  till  harnessed  and  set  to  work.  It- 
seeks  a  definite  home  just  as  does  the  religious 
spirit,  education,  law,  and  group  fraternity.  The 
spirit  of  neighborliness  which  will  take  note  of 


The  Social  Community  22S 

citizenship  only  and  be  identified  with  the  human 
relationships  which  bind  all  citizens  into  social 
unity  seeks  and  should  find  positive  and  visible 
expression.  In  some  rural  localities,  when  the 
organization  of  a  grange  was  proposed  to  meet 
a  definite  social  need,  objection  has  been  made 
on  the  ground  that  the  whole  community  ought 
to  be  organized  and  housed  in  such  a  way  that 
no  citizen  or  group  of  citizens  could  ever  vote 
on  the  membership  or  rights  of  any  citizen;  that 
the  social  center  and  the  social  organization  should 
be  as  unqualified  as  residence  in  the  locality. 

There  is  real  pathos  in  the  efforts  of  many 
communities  to  struggle  into  social  freedom 
against  the  barriers  of  traditions  handed  down 
from  the  unsocial  or  antisocial  past.  Citizens  are 
sometimes  awed  into  submissiveness  by  school 
boards  who  act  as  if  they  owned  the  property  and 
graciously  permit  the  actual  taxpayer  owners 
to  use  it  as  a  special  favor.  Schoolhouses  of  the 
old-time  sort  were  intended  to  be  used  almost 
exclusively  for  memorizing  the  contents  of  books. 
They  were  ill-suited  to  social  purposes.  School- 
houses  of  the  new  kind  are  built  expressly  to 
serve  some  of  the  purposes  of  a  community 
house;  some  of  the  old  schoolhouses  are  being 
remodeled  for  such  use.  Where  centralized  or 
consolidated  schools  mark  an  educational  com- 
munity center  either  the  school  buildings  or  a 
separate    community    house    is    an    imperative 


224     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

necessity.  The  oldest  centralized  school  in  Ohio 
has  already  been  mentioned,  the  Wayne  town- 
ship school  at  Lees  Creek  in  Clinton  County. 
The  use  of  the  school  buildings  there  for  social 
purposes  is  creating  such  a  sense  of  social  unity 
in  the  township  that  a  building  expressly  for 
community  house  purposes  is  inevitable.  Citi- 
zens from  many  different  states  visit  that  coun- 
try school,  unable  to  believe  reports  from  afar  that 
a  whole  community  can  actually  use  and  enjoy 
their  investment  in  school  buildings  and  grounds. 
While  school  buildings  and  grounds  ought  to 
be  used,  as  a  matter  of  economy,  in  as  many 
ways  and  during  as  many  hours  as  they  are 
needed  and  adapted  for  use,  many  communities 
have  found  that  the  social  spirit  often  seeks 
expression  in  ways  that  are  not  compatible  with 
school  purposes  especially  during  school  hours. 
Experience  shows  clearly  that  a  community 
house  built  expressly  for  social  and  civic  pur- 
poses is  a  necessary  addition  to  public  utilities. 
Everything  in  direct  harmony  with  educational 
activities  by  children  and  youths  can  properly  be 
brought  into  schoolhouses  at  any  time  when  the 
rooms  are  not  in  use  by  teachers  and  classes. 
Many  activities  of  mature  citizens  would  nat- 
urally seek  greater  seclusion  than  is  possible  in 
school  buildings.  The  same  causes  which  justify 
the  expenditure  of  public  money  for  class  rooms, 
desks,  and  blackboards  for  children  and  youths, 


The  Social  Community  225 

justify  a  like  expenditure  of  funds  for  the  social 
and  civic  education  of  both  youths  and  parents. 
Conscience,  that  most  eminently  desirable  per- 
sonal quality,  can  be  educated  only  by  bringing 
people  together  so  that  they  con-scio,  know  to- 
gether, fix  together  on  highest  values,  reach 
social  agreements  concerning  things  socially 
desirable.  This  makes  it  appear  that  there  is 
even  more  justification  for  spending  public 
money  for  a  well-equipped  community  house 
than  for  buildings  in  which  children  merely 
memorize  together. 

The  building  of  community  houses  or  social 
centers  has  gone  far  enough  to  call  into  being 
annual  sessions  of  a  Conference  on  Community 
centers.  The  Wisconsin  idea,  that  these  centers 
are  to  be  supported  solely  by  public  funds  and 
kept  under  tight  rein  by  the  authorities,  is  just 
now  opposed  by  the  New  York  idea,  that  char- 
ters subject  to  revocation  be  issued  to  respon- 
sible citizens  who  may  be  privileged  to  supple- 
ment public  funds  by  charging  admission  to 
various  amusements  and  entertainments.  Illi- 
nois authorizes  by  law  tax  levies  for  the  erection 
and  maintenance  of  coliseums  by  any  commu- 
nity desiring  to  avail  itself  of  such  privileges. 
Democratic  tendencies  seem  to  make  it  reason- 
ably sure  that  citizens  by  communities  will  be, 
in  the  long  run,  absolute  masters  of  their  own 
policies   and   practices.     Authorities   outside   a 


226     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

community  are  as  prone  to  become  bureaucracies 
in  America  as  elsewhere,  and  citizens  as  a  whole 
are  not  likely  to  be  amenable  to  outside  jurisdic- 
tion even  to  so  slight  a  degree  as  is  common 
among  Young  Men's  Christian  Associations. 
The  important  fact  is  that  the  social  spirit  is 
increasingly  active  in  communities;  that  it  seeks 
and  will  find  expression,  and  that  communities 
planning  to  give  a  center  to  their  social  energies 
have  the  opportunity  to  profit  by  some  rather 
costly  experience. 

The  whole  field  of  social  life  ought,  clearly, 
to  be  canvassed  and  plans  for  a  community 
house  be  made  to  fit  a  future  larger  than  the 
present.  Common  prudence  counsels  that  all  the 
social  activities  in  which  the  community  is  even 
remotely  likely  to  engage,  and  especially  such 
activities  as  are  not  fittingly  centralized  in  the 
schoolhouse,  should  be  well  provided  for.  Activ- 
ities already  housed  in  community  houses  in- 
clude the  following: 

1.  A  Municipal  Motion  Picture  School. 

2.  Permanent  Community  Exhibit. 

(a)  Historical,    (b)  Educational,    (c)  Ag- 
j   ricultural.     (d)  Mineralogical.     (e)  Floral 
and  Faunal.     (f)  Arts  and  Crafts. 

3.  Commercial  Club  and  Headquarters. 

4.  Civic  League. 

5.  Consumers'   League. 

6.  Child  Welfare  Bureau. 

7.  Playgrounds  Association. 


The  Social  Community  227 

8.  Child-Study  Clubs. 

9.  Day  Nursery. 

10.  Parent-Teacher  Associations. 

11.  Fathers'  Clubs. 

12.  Story  Tellers'  League. 

13.  Free    Clinic,    Dispensary,    and    Emergency 

Hospital. 

14.  Bureau  of  Festivities  and  Celebrations. 

15.  Physical  Education  Classes. 

16.  Vacation  Bible  Schools. 

17.  Religious  Day  Schools. 

18.  United  Church  Associations. 

19.  Choral  and  Orchestral  Unions. 

20.  Arts  and  Crafts  Clubs. 

21.  Library. 

22.  Women's  Clubs  and  Rest  Rooms. 

23.  Young  Women's  Classes,  Clubs,  and  Guilds. 

24.  Young  Men's  Clubs. 

25.  Municipal  Government  Bureau. 

26.  Bureau  of  Associated  Charities. 

27.  Employment  Bureau. 

28.  Credit  Bureau. 

29.  Permanent  Survey  Bureau. 

Many  other  temporary  and  minor  permanent 
associations  find  congenial  home  in  the  municipal 
coliseum  or  some  of  these  activities  are  wisely 
cared  for  in  schoolhouses  provided  each  school- 
room is  seated,  as  it  ought  to  be  in  any  event, 
with  movable  and  adjustable  chair  desks.  Some 
of  them,  again,  are  not  at  all  needed  in  strictly 
rural  districts  while  some  other  activities  not 
mentioned  in  this  list  would  be  needed  in  place 
of  them.  Wherever  it  is  impossible  to  forecast 
what  may  be  required  twenty-five  or  fifty  years 

(16) 


228     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

from  now  in  the  way  of  social  facilities,  ample 
ground  space  should  at  least  be  provided  so  that 
additional  equipment  may  be  had  as  needed. 

A  brief  explanation  of  some  of  the  activities 
listed  may  be  found  helpful  in  putting  present 
local  conditions  in  the  light  of  what  the  com- 
munity might  be  now  and  ought  to  be  made  as 
rapidly  as  well-planned  effort  can  bring  it  to 
pass. 

1.  The  motion  picture  school  is  a  municipal 
school  as  really  as  the  common  or  public  school. 
It  is  a  municipal  enterprise.  Its  students  are  all 
the  people  in  the  locality  who  can  be  instructed 
or  entertained  by  motion  pictures.  Its  faculty  is 
chosen  from  local  representatives  of  all  interests 
who  have  lively  concern  in  the  broadest  and 
highest  education  of  people — superintendent  of 
schools  and  two  or  three  public  school-teachers, 
one  or  more  pastors  or  religious  leaders,  one  or 
two  physicians,  specially  appointed  representa- 
tives of  the  federation  of  women's  clubs,  the 
mayor  or  someone  representing  the  local  govern- 
ment, and  the  health  officer.  The  studies  are 
from  history,  science,  literature,  the  drama,  com- 
edy— all  the  fields  of  action  now  being  put  in 
picture  form  by  the  mightiest  educational  device 
ever  discovered  by  human  wit,  the  cinemato- 
graph. Tuitions  are  fixed  by  what  the  commu- 
nity desires,  free  admissions  or  the  customary 
charges  made  by  private  owners  of  commercial- 


The  Social  Community  229 

ized  amusements.  In  this  latter  case  the  com- 
munity can  finance  many  of  its  community  house 
projects  from  the  proceeds  of  the  school,  and  at 
the  same  time  insure  to  local  citizens  the  choic- 
•2st  and  best  films  to  be  had.  The  Social  Service 
Review,  Woodward  Building,  Washington,  D. 
C,  puts  itself  at  the  command  of  any  community 
desiring  help  in  securing  lists  of  desirable  films. 
The  problem  of  adequate  censoring  of  films  for 
the  entertainment  and  enlightenment  of  a  com- 
munity is  absolutely  assured  by  this  means.  But 
the  operation  of  a  motion  picture  school  deter- 
mines at  once  a  large  part  of  the  architectural 
requirements  of  the  community  building.  It 
must  contain  the  largest  auditorium  in  the  local- 
ity suitable  for  picture  displays,  lyceum  attrac- 
tions and  other  meetings  of  large  representations 
of  the  population  to  be  served. 

2.  Displays  of  a  people's  history,  environment 
and  achievements  have  been  one  of  the  great 
features  of  public  life  in  America  since  the  Cen- 
tennial Celebration  in  1876.  Exposition,  fairs, 
and  shows  of  this  nature  have  drawn  millions  of 
dollars  from  American  pockets  and  put  an  en- 
tirely new  outlook  on  the  world  into  millions  of 
minds.  Nothing  could  more  fully  demonstrate 
the  worth  of  a  permanent  exhibit  of  local  life 
than  these  national  and  international  shows  along 
with  the  perennial  drawing  power  of  county  and 
city  fairs.    Local  pride  is  stimulated  in  the  place 


230     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

of  residence  by  a  well-kept  and  constantly  en- 
riched and  freshened  museum  of  the  natural  and 
human  history  of  the  community.  This  feature 
adds  another  requirement  to  the  architectural 
qualities  of  the  coliseum  or  community  club- 
house. It  must  be  built  with  a  view  of  display- 
ing to  best  advantage  before  the  whole  public 
the  handiwork  of  nature  and  men  in  making  the 
site  a  community  of  homes. 

3.  Local  commercial  interests  have  been  kept 
apart  and  prevented  from  becoming  a  definite 
commercial  community  by  many  causes.  But 
chief  among  these  is  the  common  lack  of  a  meet- 
ing place  and  of  regular  times  of  meeting  to- 
gether. The  community  clubhouse,  center  of  all 
the  common  life  and  activities  of  the  locality,  is 
the  most  ideal  of  all  places  for  the  regular  meet- 
ing of  local  business  men  and  for  the  entertain- 
ment of  out-of-town  guests  who  need  to  be 
shown  why  the  town  is  proud  of  itself  and  its 
history.  Club  features  for  such  purposes  fix  yet 
another  architectural  requirement  for  the  build- 
ing. Business  and  professional  men  in  all  Amer- 
ican communities  know  that  most  of  the  enter- 
prises which  have  made  the  nation  commercially 
great  have  been  discussed  and  promoted  at 
luncheon  and  dinner  conferences.  Modern 
church  buildings  are  notoriously  incomplete  with- 
out more  or  less  elaborate  preparations  for  such 
social  functions.     There  is  enough  money  tied 


The  Social  Community  231 

up  in  duplicated  dinner  equipment  in  churches 
to  furnish  a  most  complete  outfit  for  a  commu- 
nity clubhouse  outside  the  place  of  worship.  All 
considerations  of  religious  propriety  and  of  com- 
mercial enterprise  unite  in  favor  of  this  feature 
of  the  community  house. 

4.  A  new  civic  spirit  is  stirring  in  the  heart  of 
American  communities.  As  soon  as  the  women 
emancipate  the  movement  for  woman's  civic 
privileges  from  the  existing  charge  that  it  is  a 
movement  of  middle-class  women,  ignoring 
wage-earning  women  and  wives  of  wage-earners, 
there  appears  to  be  no  valid  reason  why  all  cit- 
izenship will  not  be  on  a  higher  basis.  Persons 
and  personal  relations  lie  at  the  heart  of  reality 
and  all  welfare,  and  to  these  the  line  of  female 
interest  must  be  committed  if  there  is  to  be  a 
human  race.  The  insistence  of  women  on  prying 
into  realities  which  men  commonly  hide  from 
themselves  by  a  wall  of  abstractions  is  discon- 
certing to  men  in  politics  as  well  as  in  domestic 
affairs.  Men  affect  to  hold  the  ability  of  women 
in  slight  esteem — they  are  simply  afraid  of  them 
and  their  peculiar  unmasculine  ways.  Female 
emancipation  is  far  from  complete  either  in 
women's  attitude  toward  themselves  or  in  the 
masculine  mind.  While  the  processes  of  eman- 
cipation are  being  carried  on  it  may  continue  to 
be  woman's  lot  to  feel,  to  see,  and  to  agitate  for 
a  higher  level  of  public  welfare.    They  have  al- 


232     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

ready  done  marvelously  well  considering  the 
short  distance  they  have  come  from  a  sex  com- 
pulsion to  living  duplicity  and  the  long  distance 
they  have  yet  to  go  to  possess  and  exercise  the 
rights  of  self-control — which  is  freedom.  In 
most  American  communities  they  are  foremost 
and  will  continue  to  be  foremost  in  promoting 
most  phases  of  civic  welfare. 

Most  male  voters  and  officials  would  continue 
to  sacrifice  lives  of  infants  and  children  on  the 
altar  of  political  indifference  to  enforced  regula- 
tions protecting  health.  If  the  world  waited  for 
America  to  become  beautiful,  full  of  beautiful 
and  harmonious  architecture,  landscapes  limned 
in  blending  colors  and  lined  in  graceful  art — 
the  world  would  simply  have  to  wait  till  women 
took  the  whole  work  out  of  the  hands  of  men,  or 
reared  a  generation  of  young  men  of  different 
caliber  than  those  who  have  filled  the  continent 
with  indescribable  ugliness.  He  did  not  exag- 
gerate who  said  that  the  external  marks  of 
American  towns,  with  few  exceptions,  looked  as 
if  the  heavens  had  been  opened  and  the  archi- 
tectural garbage  of  some  celestial  city  had  been 
dumped  down  on  the  desolate  prairie.  Nature's 
beauty  is  uniformly  marred  by  men  who  thrust 
buildings  up  without  regard  to  taste,  make  streets 
more  wretched  than  the  open  road,  insult  all 
sense  of  joy  in  perspective  as  they  build  homes 
and  barns  and  stores  and  public  works,  and  flaunt 


The  Social  Community  233 

desecrations  where  decorations  ought  to  be.  The 
land  which  nature  has  adorned  with  lavish  hand 
ought  to  be  made  by  man  a  wonderland  yielding 
loveliness  and  comeliness  beyond  the  fertility  of 
her  soils.  Trees,  plants,  shrubs,  flowers,  and 
clambering  vines  are  nature's  profuse  offering  to 
hide  stone  walls,  bare  foundations,  bleak  lines, 
and  all  outbuildings.  But  marks  of  heedless  neg- 
lect stare  nature  in  the  face.  Trees  along  the 
way,  worth  in  money  one  dollar  for  each  square 
inch  of  surface,  dying,  wasting,  bearing  the 
marks  of  some  vandal's  hacking  path — unseen  by 
men  of  unconcern.  The  rubbish  of  a  hundred 
homes,  dry  garbage  from  the  whole  locality, 
dropped  where  convenience  points  without  re- 
gard to  pains  of  souls  it  smites.  Unspeakable 
indecencies  left  to  defy  all  laws  of  health  as  well 
as  claims  of  culture  and  of  refined  life.  Such 
things  as  these  are  common  marks  of  man's 
strong  leadership — in  abstractions  and  imper- 
sonal affairs.  If  women  will  it  so  men  will  abide 
on  or  below  the  level  line  of  savagery.  If  women 
will  it  otherwise,  men  grumblingly  and  reluc- 
tantly will  undertake,  for  woman's  sake,  to  make 
the  home,  the  barn,  the  street,  the  city,  and  the 
nation  beautiful. 

Civic  leagues  have  set  before  them  the  work  of 
forming  voluntary  associations,  groups  having 
special  interests  at  stake,  to  learn  what  facts  lie 
close  at  hand  and  what  distant  facts  these  can  be 


234     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

made  to  yield;  to  investigate  and  agitate;  to  set 
the  leaven  of  live  sentiment  at  work  to  demand 
and  justify  all  wholesome  elements  and  embel- 
lishments of  civic  life.  The  "home  where  we  all 
live"  is  a  present  challenge  to  the  home-making 
soul  of  womankind.  The  cash  value  of  beauty 
will  rarely  move  the  men  to  earn  the  award 
which  comes  that  way;  the  urge  of  those  who 
will  not  be  denied  the  rights  of  beauty-loving 
life  are  ever  needed  to  make  the  home  commu- 
nity clean,  winsome,  and  full  of  beauty.  For 
purposes  such  as  these  the  community  center  is 
preeminently  the  proper  home,  and  the  claims 
of  the  civic  league  should  surely  help  to  shape 
the  fashion  of  the  house. 

5.  Consumers  found  it,  years  ago,  important 
to  act  together  in  order  to  secure  desirable 
changes  in  conditions  of  retail  trade.  The  Na- 
tional Consumers'  League  with  headquarters  in 
New  York  City  has  been  instrumental  in  bring- 
ing about  many  reforms  for  the  help  of  clerks 
and  of  merchants  themselves,  improvements 
which  could  be  secured  only  by  united  action  of 
a  representative  body  of  consumers.  Early  clos- 
ing, shorter  working  hours,  early  shopping,  half- 
holidays,  and  better  shopping  facilities  are  a  few 
of  their  activities  in  behalf  of  public  welfare  in 
the  health  of  employed  people.  The  leadership 
of  local  branches  of  the  league  is  greatly  needed 
in  most  localities,  sometimes  even  to  help  mer- 


The  Social  Community  235 

chants  overcome  faults  in  the  system  of  trade 
which  they  unaided  cannot  correct.  The  need 
of  the  local  league  is  chiefly  for  a  place  of  meet- 
ing and  the  widest  possible  opportunity  for  pub- 
licity of  their  plans  and  projects.  The  commu- 
nity house  furnishes  these. 

6.  Child  welfare  bureaus  are  fundamentally 
important  in  all  communities.  The  bulletins  and 
reports  of  the  secretary  of  the  Bureau  of  Child 
Welfare  of  the  national  government  ought  to  be 
discussed  by  groups  of  citizens  everywhere.  The 
display  provided  by  the  Child  Welfare  Exhibit 
Company  of  New  York  ought  to  be  given  fullest 
publicity  and  widest  opportunity  to  do  its  silent 
but  effective  work.  Community  welfare  in  all 
its  permanent  forms  depends  on  the  steady  pull 
of  public  sentiment  demanding  all  conditions  of 
well-being  for  the  little  ones  whose  helplessness 
is  the  contant  challenge  to  adults.  Space  for 
exhibits  in  the  most  favorable  place  of  publicity, 
rooms  for  conference  and  discussions,  and  per- 
manent headquarters  are  the  needs  of  this  group. 
The  desirability  of  having  all  of  these  in  the  com- 
munity house  is  fully  apparent. 

7.  The  work  of  establishing  and  maintaining 
adequate  playground  facilities  is  vastly  more 
than  the  mere  purchase  of  grounds  and  equip- 
ment. The  publications  of  the  National  Play- 
grounds Association  of  America  have  need  to 
be  prominently  displayed.    Public  interest  must 


236     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

be  widened  and  clarified.  The  local  group  which 
always  acts  as  the  promoter  and  sponsor  for  this 
important  work  needs  the  community  house  as 
much  or  more  than  any  other  one  group  of  cit- 
izens. And  the  community  house  ought  to  be 
so  built  as  to  serve  best  the  needs  of  this  public 
interest. 

8.  Child-study  clubs  are  increasing  more  rap- 
idly, perhaps,  than  any  other  one  sort  of  serious 
group  bodies  of  citizens.  The  study  of  books 
takes  on  new  meaning  and  delight  when  living 
children  are  used  as  illustrations  and  demonstra- 
tions of  printed  statements.  A  new  and  won- 
drously  interesting  body  of  literature  has  come 
into  being  in  recent  years,  books,  magazines,  and 
periodicals,  designed  to  make  a  delight  and  not 
a  drudgery  of  the  close  observation  and  thought- 
ful consideration  of  child  life.  This  is  one  of  the 
most  hopeful  features  of  modern  conditions. 
Abundant  facilities  for  special  library  and  confer- 
ence privileges,  access  to  children  of  different 
types  and  ages,  and  rooms  fitted  for  demonstra- 
tions as  part  of  group  study,  ought  to  be  taken 
into  consideration  when  a  community  house  is 
planned.  Where  public  school-teachers  can  give 
time  and  energy  to  the  direction  of  the  study 
some  of  it  can  profitably  be  done  in  the  school- 
house.  But  until  schools  become  more  closely 
identified  than  in  the  past  with  community  life 
outside  of  class-room  interests,  most  young  folk 


The  Social  Community  237 

who  are  not  in  school  and  most  parents  would 
prefer  to  meet  almost  anywhere  rather  than  in  a 
schoolroom.  The  community  house  is  ideally  the 
place  for  it. 

9.  The  day  nursery  is  almost  a  public  neces- 
sity in  every  community.  Mothers  are  so  often 
called  to  go  where  it  is  impossible  or  inexpedient 
to  take  the  little  ones  with  them  or  prevented 
from  going  where  they  ought  to  go  by  the  incon- 
venience of  taking  the  babe  with  them.  This 
utility  is  one  of  the  first  in  many  communities  to 
be  provided  by  the  thoughtful  care  of  citizens. 
It  is  of  very  special  help  in  agricultural  commu- 
nities where  mothers  from  out  of  town  are  com- 
pelled to  drag  their  children  from  store  to  store 
as  they  do  their  necessary  shopping.  A  creche  is  a 
community  necessity  and  not  a  luxury.  Mother- 
hearted  women  will  always  know  what  conven- 
iences ought  to  be  made  part  of  it  when  the  com- 
munity house  is  being  planned  and  built. 

10.  The  parent-teacher  section  of  the  Amer- 
ican Congress  of  Mothers  has  come  to  be  an 
indispensable  part  of  the  public  school  system 
in  all  communities  where  parents  and  teachers 
take  seriously  their  common  stewardship  in  chil- 
dren. It  is  customary  for  an  association  to  be 
formed  in  connection  with  each  school  building, 
sometimes  even  for  each  grade,  and  for  all  the 
associations  in  the  community  to  be  federated 
and   working   along   uniform   lines.     It   is   fre- 


238     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

quently  best  to  hold  meetings  of  the  association 
in  the  schoolhouse  but  never  unless  the  school- 
rooms are  equipped  with  modern  chair-desks. 
Male  parents  resent  being  crowded  into  old-fash- 
ioned desk  seats.  Docile  mothers,  being  accus- 
tomed to  discomforts,  do  not  mind  it,  but  it  is  a 
noticeable  fact  that  fathers  almost  invariably  have 
urgent  engagements  elsewhere  when  the  parent- 
teacher  association  meets  in  the  schoolhouse. 
When  it  meets  in  the  usual  center  of  community 
life  fathers  are  as  eager  as  mothers  for  associa- 
tion meetings.  The  presence  of  club  privileges 
in  the  same  building  promises  easy  escape  from 
boredom.  At  all  events  the  community  house 
should  be  constructed  with  a  view  to  housing  the 
parent-teacher  association. 

11.  Fathers'  clubs,  associations  of  fathers  to 
take  counsel  together  on  matters  of  mutual  con- 
cern, are  a  new  and  promising  feature  of  com- 
munity life  in  some  cities.  In  one  Iowa  city,  for 
example,  every  father  is  a  member  by  being  a 
father — ^he  is  never  asked  to  join  but  informed  of 
his  membership  and  duties  as  a  member.  The 
schools  in  this  city  are  administered  along  lines 
discussed  and  decided  upon  in  meetings  of 
fathers.  The  club  wisely  refrains  from  mixing 
directly  into  politics  but  there  is  a  general  under- 
standing that  no  man  is  eligible  for  any  munici- 
pal office  unless  he  stands  for  the  welfare  of  all 
the  children  in  the  city  and  uses  his  official  posi- 


The  Social  Community  239 

tion  to  conserve  that  element  of  community  wel- 
fare. Club  privileges  in  the  community  house, 
suited  to  male  sense  of  proprieties  and  conven- 
iences, make  it  the  ideal  meeting  place  of  these 
associations  of  fathers. 

12.  Only  within  recent  years  has  the  National 
Story  Tellers'  League  come  into  existence  and 
fostered  the  extension  of  its  work  through  local 
circles.  The  universal  popularity  of  the  well- 
told  story  and  the  practical  disappearance  of  the 
art  of  conversation  make  the  work  of  story  tell- 
ing of  unusual  importance  in  all  communities. 
The  community  house  furnishes  both  opportu- 
nity and  incentives  to  the  work  of  local  circles  or 
chapters  of  this  league. 

13.  Compulsory  dental  and  medical  examina- 
tion of  all  schoolchildren  has  come  to  be  an 
indispensable  part  of  school  life  in  American 
communities.  Instances  have  been  found  where 
parents  desired  this  to  be  done  and  physicians 
offered  to  contribute  their  services  to  this  public 
clinic  as  a  service  to  the  community,  but  the 
school  board  would  not  allow  it  to  be  done  or 
make  provision  for  the  doing  of  it  in  the  school- 
house.  The  community  house,  property  of  the 
community,  ought  to  be  built  with  the  view  of 
providing  for  free  clinics  for  all  citizens  of  all 
ages.  This  carries  with  it  by  necessity  the  equip- 
ment for  a  dispensary.  The  district  or  visiting 
nurse  should  have  her  headquarters  here  and 


240     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

follow  up  physicians'  recommendations  to  see  that 
children  are  not  made  still  further  the  victims 
of  thoughtless  and  careless  parents  and  denied 
needed  attention.  An  equipment  for  emergency 
care  of  people  unexpectedly  stricken  or  overtaken 
by  accidental  injury  completes  this  absolutely 
essential  group  of  public  utilities.  The  nature 
of  the  work  to  be  done  makes  it  imperative  that 
skilled  attention  be  given  to  proper  planning  for 
it  in  the  plans  for  the  community  house. 

14.  The  local  bureau  of  community  fun  and 
festivities  needs  only  permanent  headquarters. 
Play  festiv£ils,  pageants,  seasonal  celebrations, 
and  all  sorts  of  popular  functions  are  well-nigh 
indispensable  in  creating  a  lively  sense  of  com- 
munity interest  and  social  pride.  But  these 
things  never  come  by  accident — they  are  planned 
for  and  worked  out  months,  and  sometimes  even 
years,  in  advance.  Where  localities  make  no 
sort  of  provision  for  theif'own  general  play  life 
they  must  expect  to  be  victimized  by  all  sorts 
of  commercial  amusements.  The  play-instinct 
will  seek  and  find  expression  and  citizens  who 
become  playfellows  are  better  citizens.  The 
work  of  cementing  the  population  of  a  locality 
into  true  community  spirit  is  in  very  great  meas- 
ure the  stewardship  of  those  who  volunteer  to 
guide  the  play  life  of  the  people.  The  commu- 
nity house  ought,  in  the  very  nature  of  its  func- 
tion, to  be  the  permanent  headquarters  of  the 


The  Social  Community  241 

bureau  of  festivities — and  licenses  for  street  car- 
nivals and  all  similar  popular  appeals  to  sportive 
tendencies  should  be  issued  only  on  the  approval 
of  this  bureau. 

15.  Physical  education  implies  both  outdoor 
playgrounds  and  indoor  gymnasium  facilities 
with  a  full  equipment  of  lockers,  shower  baths, 
swimming  pools,  and  lounging  rooms.  Social 
changes  and  different  habits  of  life  are  rapidly 
undermining  the  physical  stamina  of  American 
people.  A  sound  and  healthy  body  is  the  very 
unusual  exception  among  adults  as  well  as  among 
children.  When  health  is  precarious  all  accom- 
plishments and  attainments  fall  into  secondary 
importance.  A  vigorous  agitation  throughout 
the  nation  is  greatly  needed  to  arouse  public 
sense  and  conscience  to  the  urgency  of  provi- 
sions for  adequate  health-building  facilities. 
Money  now  wasted  in  perpetuating  superfluous 
institutions  ought  to  be  diverted  to  channels  of 
high-grade  and  constructive  fun.  Religious,  fra- 
ternal, and  commercial  interests  would  all  be  im- 
mensely advanced  by  a  wholesome  reconstruction 
of  local  and  social  ideas  and  ideals.  The  Young 
Men's  Christian  Association  has  created  many 
times  the  wealth  it  has  cost  by  making  itself  a 
minister  of  physical  education.  It  has  almost 
completely  withdrawn  from  the  field  of  com- 
petitive athletics  in  order  that  the  interests  of 
physical  education  of  the  many  should  not  be  sac- 


242     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

rificed  to  the  training  of  a  few  star  performers  of 
exceptional  skill.  Now  what  the  associations, 
both  Young  Men's  and  Young  Women's,  have 
done  for  a  few  of  each  sex  the  community  as  a 
whole  ought  at  once  to  do  for  the  whole  citizen- 
ship—provide generously  for  the  physical  educa- 
tion, by  groups  and  classes,  of  the  whole  body 
of  citizens  who  are  not  so  provided  for  by  well- 
administered  school  playgrounds  and  gymna- 
siums. The  most  profitable  investment  of  money 
for  public  welfare  is  the  building  of  a  community 
house  complete  to  the  last  detail  for  building  up 
health  in  the  bodies  of  all  growing  and  grown 
persons  in  the  locality.  The  community  house 
can  be  built,  as  experience  abundantly  shows, 
where  it  is  either  impossible  or  impracticable  to 
support  a  Young  Men's  or  Young  Women's 
Christian  Association.  The  calling  of  one  or 
two  directors  of  physical  education — not  coaches 
for  athletic  teams — to  direct  the  use  of  the  com- 
munity house  facilities  is  one  of  the  most 
urgently  needed  of  community  reforms.  The 
quality  of  citizenship  which  must  bear  the  burden 
of  a  changed  world  is  to  be  as  largely  determined 
by  community  action  on  this  line  as  by  any  other 
popular  action. 

16-17.  The  progress  of  both  vacation  Bible 
schools  and  of  religious  day  schools  has  been 
hindered  mostly  by  lack  of  suitable  meeting 
places.     Church  buildings  have  not  been  built 


The  Social  Community  243 

with  educational  vision,  everything  in  them  cen- 
ters in  the  pulpit  or  in  the  dining  tables  in  the 
basement.  Yards  about  church  buildings  have 
almost  never  been  adapted  for  play  by  children 
or  anyone  else.  Furthermore,  traditional  differ- 
ences among  parents  make  it  difficult  for  children 
of  Jewish  or  Roman  Catholic  parents  to  feel  at 
home  in  a  Protestant  meetinghouse,  and  repre- 
sentatives of  different  sects  of  Protestants  do  not 
feel  equally  at  home  in  all  church  buildings. 
Schoolhouses  are  frequently  not  open  for  use  by 
teachers  of  any  religion.  A  community  house, 
the  property  of  the  whole  community  and  open 
for  use  by  any  constructive  influence  or  force  in 
the  community,  solves  the  problem.  Where  the 
religious  day  school  becomes  as  popular  as  it  has 
in  many  places  even  the  community  house  would 
be  inadequate  for  it.  Daily  chapel  services  might 
also  be  held  in  it  for  the  convenience  of  school- 
children who  would  have  to  go  far  out  of  their 
way  to  reach  a  church  building.  For  the  reli- 
gious health  of  a  community  a  community  house 
is  almost  as  essential  as  for  its  social  welfare. 

18.  For  lack  of  common  meeting  place  church- 
men have  been  kept  apart  as  have  merchants. 
The  community  house  can  perform  a  most  impor- 
tant function,  serving  as  the  one  common  meet- 
ing place  for  religious  leaders  and  workers,  an 
institution  identified  with  all  the  interests  of  the 
whole   community.     Differences  between  local 

(17) 


244     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

Churches  are  mostly  social  and  temperamental, 
and  the  field  of  common  interest  and  common 
effort  is  constantly  enlarging.  By  having  one 
common  center,  a  property  belonging  to  all  on 
equal  terms,  a  most  desirable  advantage  is  gained 
for  the  religious  peace  and  prosperity  of  the  com- 
munity. Religious  freedom  in  America  guar- 
antees to  everyone  a  right  to  get  off  in  a  corner, 
fence  one's  self  in  and  others  out,  and  die  in 
peace,  but  religious  exclusiveness  will  be  all  the 
harder  when  whole  communities  are  organized 
for  fellowship  in  all  good  work  without  prejudice 
toward  any.  The  game  of  religious  solitaire  has 
unique  attractions  for  ascetic  souls  who  cannot 
worship  God  unless  they  can  get  away  from  folk, 
the  common  herd,  and  rise  unseen  on  their  own 
pinions.  Needless  to  say  that  this  religion  will 
not  help  communities,  shape  nations,  nor  save 
humanity.  The  community  house  will  be,  as  it 
is  wherever  it  stands,  a  silent  rebuke  to  all  unso- 
cial and  nonsocial  individuals  and  groups  of  cit- 
izens. 

19.  Cities  and  villages  in  different  parts  of 
the  Union  are  famed  for  their  music,  like  the 
little  city  in  K^ansas  whose  music-loving  souls 
have  given  eighty-two  public  renditions  of  the 
oratorio,  "The  Messiah."  When  such  a  fact  is 
mentioned  minds  spontaneously  conceive  a  com- 
munity knit  together  by  countless  ties  other  than 
music.    The  judgment  is  always  justified.    Music 


The  Social  Community  245 

is  the  one  universal  language,  appealing  to  emo- 
tions, conscience,  intellect,  and  social  propen- 
sities. Music  stands  foremost  among  the  forces 
which  reach  out  entwining  arms  and  bring  indi- 
viduals into  social  consciousness.  Lack  of  a 
music  center,  of  a  place  where  all  the  active  and 
latent  musical  abilities  of  a  community  could  be 
assembled,  developed,  trained,  and  built  into  so- 
cial harmonies,  has  done  more  perhaps  than  any 
other  one  thing  to  retard  the  musical  life  of  the 
nation  and  to  hold  back  a  richer  recognition  of 
community  rights  and  duties.  Church  choirs 
have  been  almost  the  only  saving  grace  in  many 
American  communities,  so  far  as  the  power  of 
music  in  concerned;  but  deplorable  divisions  be- 
tween Churches  have  prevented  the  whole  mu- 
sical power  of  the  community  from  being  devel- 
oped for  the  enrichment  of  the  whole  community. 
When  community  houses  are  being  planned  and 
built  much  attention  should  be  given  to  the  re- 
quirements of  the  whole  locality  for  the  varied 
development  of  its  unified  musical  life. 

20.  Studios,  as  many  in  number  and  as  varied 
in  equipment  as  the  community  may  need,  ought 
to  be  provided  for  popular  education  and  expres- 
sion in  all  lines  of  artistic  handiwork.  Our  Puri- 
tan ancestors  robbed  life  of  all  its  aesthetic 
appreciations  except  the  one  doleful  pleasure  of 
long-drawn  minor  melodies  fit  to  bewail  the  god- 
lessness  of  man.     Traditions  of  their  day  and 


246     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

atrabiliar  mood  continue  to  make  many  folk  feel 
sure  that  what  is  exquisite  and  full  of  high  de- 
light cannot  be  related  to  religion  or  be  a  needful 
factor  of  home  and  social  life.  Some  commu- 
nities fortunately  have  learned  to  the  contrary 
and  have  found  that  energies  are  most  profitably 
spent  when  finding  out  and  multiplying  appre- 
ciations and  contacts  with  the  gentle  arts.  Na- 
ture always  makes  thousands  able  to  appreciate 
to  where  one  is  able  to  create ;  but  the  apprecia- 
tions of  the  thousands  must  wait  on  the  creative 
activities  of  those  who  toil  that  others  may  enjoy. 
To  encourage  the  latent  creative  abilities  in  the 
lives  of  youths  is  to  make  active  the  appreciative 
abilities  whose  lives  are  thus  enriched.  The 
community  house  should  make  provision  for 
free  studios  for  the  encouragement  of  those  who 
are  happiest  when  ministering  to  good  taste. 
Drawing,  sketching,  painting,  ceramics,  weaving, 
needle  work,  photography,  and  the  like  are  all 
deserving  of  public  recognition  and  public  sup- 
port. The  community  house  is  the  ideal  way  by 
which  to  lend  popular  aid  to  these  forms  of  finer 
art.  If  the  chief  business  of  all  communities  is  to 
make  its  members  virtuosos  in  the  fine  art  of  liv- 
ing life  to  the  full,  one  of  the  chief  values  of 
the  community  house  to  the  community  is  the 
instigation  to  excellence  which  it  holds  out. 

21.    The  public  library  is,  like  the  schoolhouse, 
a  community  enterprise,  ministering  to  common 


The  Social  Community  247 

happiness  and  common  good.  Despite  the  men- 
tal disintegration  marked  by  the  popularity  of 
the  more  flippant  and  worthless  films,  more 
books,  more  thoroughly  good  books  are  being 
read  in  proportion  to  population  than  ever  be- 
fore. The  community's  first  concern  ought  to 
include  the  welfare  of  the  library  which  houses 
the  public's  books  and  incites  to  wider  use  of 
them.  The  library,  where  it  is  not  already 
housed  in  its  own  separate  building,  might  most 
fittingly  be  installed  in  a  place  of  honor  in  the 
community  house. 

22.  Rest  rooms  for  out-of-town  women  are 
required  by  law  in  some  of  the  states.  Common 
courtesy  on  the  part  of  the  commercial  interests 
and  social  courtesy  on  the  part  of  city  and  town 
women  would  prompt  them  to  provide  such  hos- 
pitality. General  social  thoughtlessness  has  pre- 
vented the  custom  from  becoming  a  community 
habit.  Since  women's  clubs  have  come  to  be  a 
large  factor  in  community  life  demands  have 
multiplied  for  club  rooms  for  a  headquarters,  a 
general  center  of  woman's  activities  for  public 
weal.  These  two  facilities  ought  to  be  closely 
associated,  the  rest  room  for  out-of-town  women 
and  their  home  folk,  and  the  club  rooms  for  all 
the  women  of  the  big  community.  Women's 
social  activities  have  so  much  to  do  with  deter-' 
mining  the  social  possibilities  of  knitting  com- 
munity relations  into  many  and  happy  bonds  that 


248     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

the  closer  their  activities  are  brought  together 
the  better  for  the  objectives  they  seek  to  achieve. 
The  community  house  affords  opportunity  for 
housing  these  separate  activities,  making  it  the 
easier  to  extend  hospitalities  to  guests  and  to 
bring  far-reaching  influences  to  a  meeting  point. 
It  is  of  course  understood  that  gambling  clubs  of 
either  male  or  female  membership  would  nat- 
urally prefer  more  privacy  than  a  community 
house  could  give.  Reference  to  women's  clubs 
in  connection  with  civic  affairs  always  contem- 
plates only  those  which  have  to  do  with  some 
phase  of  culture  or  efficiency. 

23.  The  most  important  and  most  neglected 
part  of  community  life  has  to  do  with  the  social 
life  of  girls  and  young  women.  With  the  waken- 
ing of  community  conscience  it  always  becomes 
a  first  matter  of  concern  that  the  young  women 
shall  have  generous  provision  made  for  their 
training  in  all  the  arts  of  hospitality  and  social 
leadership.  The  need  is  a  crying  and  claimant 
one  throughout  the  continent.  If  women  remain 
close  to  primal  instincts  and  impulses  it  is  the 
fault  of  the  community  which  gives  them  no 
chance  to  learn  a  finer  and  higher  exercise  of 
their  powers.  Parlors  must  be  provided  suited 
to  all  sorts  of  meetings  of  groups  of  young 
women  and  their  guests.  There  is  a  sort  of  grim 
humor  behind  the  flaying  of  popular  amuse- 
ments, particularly  of  dancing  and  card-playing, 


The  Social  Community  249 

which  often  issue  from  platforms  and  pulpits. 
If  a  fraction  of  the  energy  thus  uselessly  spent 
would  be  given  to  showing  folk  how  to  do  some- 
thing more  enjoyable  and  more  worth  while  the 
problem  would  solve  itself.  Grant  that  most 
popular  amusements  appeal  to  primal  instincts, 
that  they  are  selfish,  that  they  minister  to  less 
than  the  best  in  those  who  indulge  in  them,  that 
they  are  fraught  with  social  and  moral  peril — 
grant  all  that  the  most  puritanical  opposer  of 
them  may  say,  what  follows?  If  folk  know 
nothing  better  and  no  one  cares  enough  to  show 
them  how  to  do  anything  better,  why  expect 
them  to  do  anything  else?  The  modern  craze 
for  weird  dances  is  only  a  lapse  into  customs  on 
a  plane  of  much  of  the  barbarism  thin  gilt  with 
artificial  culture  into  which  modern  civilization 
has  been  led.  When  life  itself  is  mainly  sen- 
suous, social  life  is  bound  to  be  both  sensuous 
and  sensual.  When  young  folk  are  thrust  out  to 
walk  the  streets  and  gain  their  social  culture 
where  they  happen  to  find  it,  there  is  no  human 
reason  for  looking  for  them  to  know  how  to  do 
more  than  the  simplest,  easiest,  and  least  cul- 
tured things.  If  social  leaders  really  mean  what 
they  think  they  do,  they  have  it  in  their  power 
to  raise  up  a  generation  of  young  folk  full  of 
social  resources,  well-poised,  refined.  But  it  is 
not  written  in  history  that  such  results  have  ever 
been  brought  to  pass  by  telling  folk  what  not  to 


250     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

do  and  scolding  them  for  doing  the  only  things 
they  had  had  a  chance  to  learn. 

American  preparedness  must  lie  in  the  customs 
of  cooperation  which  citizens  learn.  Under  such 
pressure  as  has  never  been  put  before  any  demo- 
cratic people  Great  Britain  found  it  impossible, 
even  until  now,  to  will  its  citizens  into  efficiency, 
social  and  moral  readiness,  instant  and  respon- 
sive to  conserve  their  human  resources.  The 
absence  of  millions  of  men  under  military  orders 
let  loose  unfamiliar  opportunities  for  personal 
license — and  the  end  cannot  be  foreseen  and  will 
not  be  measured  for  a  generation.  Democratic 
America,  if  the  nation  is  to  be- made  fit  and  able 
to  endure,  must  "take  up  the  slack,"  must  plan 
with  forward-looking  zeal  for  wiser  ways  of  life. 
Shaping  the  youthful  womanhood  of  the  nation 
into  social  power  is  even  more  important  than 
training  girls  in  higher  mathematics  and  classic 
languages — it  is  fashioning  the  motherhood 
whose  sons  ought  to  be  race  leaders  and  whose 
daughters  ought  to  be  the  emancipators  of  the 
girlhood  and  womanhood  of  all  mankind.  Such 
results  come  not  by  wishing  them  nor  dreaming 
them  but  by  well-planned  causes  which  produce 
them.  American  communities  are  doing  far 
more  for  the  nation  by  generously  providing  so- 
cial privileges  for  their  young  women  than  they 
could  do  by  the  more  spectacular  act  of  sending 
their  sons  off  to  join  the  army.     Community 


The  Social  Community  251 

houses  worthy  of  the  name  will  embody  the  best 
ideals  of  social  parlors  and  club  facilities  for  the 
girls  and  young  women  of  the  entire  locality. 

24.  Boys  and  young  men  make  their  own  club 
rooms  if  the  community  fails  to  provide  them — 
in  barns,  caves,  abandoned  buildings,  and  in  most 
unlikely  places.  Fond  parents  are  sometimes 
horrified  to  find  their  sons  off  gambling  some- 
where— they  might  better  be  horrified  with  their 
own  stupidity.  One  friend  of  boys  in  Chicago 
has  had  one  hundred  and  twenty-eight  boys  in 
his  "bunch."  Most  of  them  were  of  the  city's 
most  unlikely  material,  alley  rats  and  pick-ups. 
He  has  lost  not  one  of  them.  Many  of  them  are 
now  in  college.  Many  of  them  are  leaders  of 
other  "bunches"  of  fellows.  They  are,  without 
one  exception,  on  the  way  to  splendid  citizen- 
ship. How  does  he  do  it?  He  does  not  do  much 
for  the  fellows — ^he  only  lives  with  them,  rents 
an  apartment  and  makes  it  the  club  headquarters. 
The  fellows  mostly  discipline  each  other.  He  is 
out  with  them  by  day  and  by  night.  When  they 
need  discipline  from  an  older  mind  or  hand  they 
get  it  and  get  it  so  straight  that  they  know  pre- 
cisely what  it  is  they  got.  He  is  simply  one  of 
them.  Chicago  has  many  names  printed  daily 
in  her  papers  but  it  is  a  question  if  any  citizen 
in  the  millions  there  is  doing  more  for  the  com- 
munity and  the  nation  than  has  been  done  by 
the     almost    unknown     Adolph     Hammesphar. 


252      Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

What  can  be  done  in  Chicago  can  be  done  in 
any  community  in  America.  All  the  young  fel- 
lows need  is  suggestion  and  a  chance.  Budding 
criminals  can  be  turned  to  ripened  citizens  by 
trivial  things,  as  men  count  trivialities.  What 
the  youthful  males  most  need  is  companionship 
and  tasks  which  strain  their  muscles  and  their 
moral  souls.  A  visitor  of  the  right  sort  can  find 
in  a  few  hours  enough  hid  vice  in  almost  any 
town  or  city  in  America  to  throw  prim  citizens 
of  both  sexes  into  spasms.  These  are  the  human 
facts  plain  to  those  who  look  for  them.  The 
remedy  is  to  pull  social  life  into  the  open,  have 
so  much  that  is  worth  while  going  on  that  youth- 
ful animals  have  neither  time  nor  inclination  to 
meet  in  dark  corners  and  slink  away  together.. 
The  planners  and  builders  of  community  houses 
miss  most  of  the  value  of  these  structures  when 
they  fail  to  provide  game  and  recreation  rooms  of 
all  desirable  sorts  for  male  associations.  This 
fixes  another  demand  of  life  upon  the  building 
plans  of  the  structure  designed  to  be  a  social 
center  for  the  whole  community. 

25.  A  municipal  government  bureau  is  one  of 
the  newest  demands.  It  rises  out  of  the  same 
spirit  which  has  caused  Oregon  to  plan  courses 
in  practical  civics  to  fit  young  folk  for  political 
service  in  local  governments.  Experiments  are 
being  tried  out  in  all  parts  of  the  land  to  end 
effectively  the  era  of  municipal  shiftlessness  and 


The  Social  Community  253 

corruption.  Citizens  of  American  communities 
have  need  to  be  enlightened  and  made  ready  for 
the  new  order  of  things.  A  separate  section  of  a 
public  library  ought  to  be  set  apart  for  the  re- 
ports, bulletins,  magazines,  and  general  publi- 
cations which  have  to  do  with  successful  changes 
wrought  out  in  the  business  of  municipal  affairs. 
Smaller  assembly  rooms  ought  to  be  available 
for  group  meetings  having  to  do  with  local  gov- 
ernment. Bringing  government  out  of  politics 
and  into  the  field  of  business  makes  new  and 
large  drafts  on  the  attention  of  citizens  generally 
and  makes  it  necessary  to  provide  for  meeting 
places  where  women  as  well  as  men  may  attend. 
This  points  directly  at  the  municipal  function  of 
the  community  house. 

26.  Charities,  too,  are  being  wholly  taken  out 
of  the  region  of  sentiment  and  put  under  busi- 
ness oversight  and  management.  The  convic- 
tion has  become  general  that  gifts  to  poor  people, 
undiscriminating  charity,  are  the  poorest  of  all 
forms  of  poor  relief,  creating  more  poverty  than 
they  alleviate.  This  makes  it  imperative  that 
the  records  indispensable  to  the  conduct  of  the 
business  shall  be  readily  accessible  and  in  a  con- 
veniently located  place.  The  community  house 
appears  to  be  the  best  of  all  places  in  which  to 
center  its  activities. 

27.  The  problem  of  unemployment  has  come 
to   be    considered   one   of   the   most   important 


254     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

phases  of  efficient  community  life.  The  national 
government  is  giving  more  attention  to  the  solu- 
tion of  it  than  at  any  earlier  time  in  history. 
The  causes  of  unemployment  must  be  sought  out 
— the  production  of  unemployable  persons,  harsh 
and  inhuman  methods  of  employers,  misfit  work- 
men, seasonal  employment — all  of  these  big 
problems  come  back  to  local  community  condi- 
tions for  causes  and  consequents.  Even  in  small 
communities  there  is  need  for  expert  supervision 
of  an  employment  bureau  and  the  community 
house  offers  best  opportunities  for  keeping  its 
activities  in  closest  touch  with  conditions 
throughout  the  locality.  Planning  for  public 
works  at  the  usual  time  of  seasonal  employment 
brings  the  work  close  to  that  of  the  municipal 
government  bureau. 

28.  Credit  bureaus  are  becoming  more  and 
more  a  practical  necessity,  not  as  collection 
agencies  but  as  means  for  expanding  the  scope 
of  safe  credit  to  consumers  and  of  raising  the 
standard  of  moral  citizenship  throughout  the 
trade  territory.  This  feature  is  of  especial  im- 
portance in  county  seats  where  the  trade  of  a 
locality  naturally  centers  and  where  public  rec- 
ords are  immediately  available  to  keep  ratings  in 
constant  touch  with  all  property  transfers  and 
personal  conditions  of  commercial  significance. 
Wherever  the  credit  bureau  is  not  a  private  en- 
terprise it  is  most  fittingly  kept  as  close  as  pos- 


The  Social  Community  255 

sible  to  the  center  of  community  life,  in  the 
community  house. 

29.  Public  affairs  have  in  the  past  been  run 
with  little  regard  to  facts.  Auditors  of  cities 
and  counties  have  been  almost  the  only  officials 
whose  duties  were  exclusively  with  the  facts  of 
the  case.  The  moment  municipal  government 
and  the  conduct  of  public  interests  are  put  on  a 
business  basis  the  very  first  requirement  is  for 
a  complete  showing  of  all  the  community's  assets 
and  liabilities  in  property  and  in  persons.  A 
permanent  survey  bureau  is  absolutely  essential 
to  efficiency  in  community  welfare.  Many  items 
of  the  survey  are  of  class  interest,  that  is,  some 
of  the  facts  obtained  are  of  particular  importance 
to  ministers,  others  to  school  boards  and  school- 
teachers; others  to  retail  merchants.  There  is 
abundant  reason  why  special  attention  should 
be  given  in  the  building  of  a  community  house 
for  fire-proof  vaults,  cabinet  cases,  and  all  the 
needed  equipment  for  housing  the  most  impor- 
tant of  all  current  community  records  and  re- 
ports. 

This  brief  sketch  of  some  of  the  uses  of  a 
community  coliseum  or  house  may  serve  as  a 
suggestion  to  many  other  important  functions  it 
may  be  made  to  serve.  Enough  is  shown  to 
point  out  how  close  the  community  house  idea 
lies  to  the  whole  field  of  social  responsibility 
and  community  betterment.    Wherever  local  sen- 


256     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

timent  is  sufficiently  developed  to  justify  the 
building  of  a  center  for  the  social,  religious,  and 
civic  life  of  the  whole  community,  its  presence 
will  be  a  spur  to  the  development  of  social  spirit 
and  conscience.  The  new  age  of  community  life 
and  the  spread  of  a  nearer  approach  to  the  ideals 
of  democratic  society  will  make  increased  use  of 
a  community  center  invaluable  in  maintaining 
the  close  relations  of  the  big  community  family. 


CHAPTER  Xn 

The  Political  Community 

Government  by  Neighbors 

The  Puritan  town  communities  of  New  Eng- 
land began  the  most  persistent  and  probably  the 
most  important  experiment  ever  made  in  the 
popular  control  of  practical  morals.  Ancient  and 
modern  nations  alike  have  brought  within  the 
scope  of  their  criminal  laws  a  great  many  acts 
which  properly  are  sins  or  vices  rather  than 
crimes.  But  outside  of  the  United  States  the 
inclusion  of  sins  and  vices  among  the  mala  pro- 
hibita  of  statute  law  has  been  at  the  dictation  of 
a  ruling  class  which  has  held  itself  superior  in 
character  and  intelligence,  as  in  wealth  and  in 
power.  The  object  has  been  to  impose  upon  the 
governed  rules  that  would  insure  not  only  social 
order  and  general  well-being,  but  also  the  su- 
premacy of  the  dominant  estate.  In  the  Puritan 
towns  of  Massachusetts  Bay  there  was  a  domi- 
nating group,  but  it  was  not  a  ruling  class  in- 
trenched in  privilege,  and  as  the  community 
became  miscellaneous  and  democratic  the  habit 
of  making  private  conduct  an  affair  of  public 
concern  persisted.  I  am  not  aware  that  this 
transfer  of  power  to  dictate  morals  from  the 
classes  and  the  potentates  to  the  masses  has  ever 
been  described  as  a  revolution.  It  did  not  come 
with  observation,  and  the  violent  took  nothing 
by  storm ;  but  it  was  a  revolution  in  fact,  one  of 
the  most  momentous  revolutions  in  history.    Its 

257 


258     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

consequences  have  been  and  are  far  reaching. 
They  are  seen  now  in  every  commonwealth  of  the 
Union.  Year  after  year  Legislatures  busy  them- 
selves with  all  possible  questions  of  individual 
behavior.  Throughout  the  length  and  breadth 
of  the  nation  the  whole  public  has  become  cen- 
sor and  arbiter.  *  *  *  xhe  important  fact  to 
remember  is  that  this  and  all  related  develop- 
ments of  social  control  through  the  organs  of 
government  are  manifestations  of  a  popular  pur- 
pose and  an  essentially  democratic  method  which 
had  their  first  important  tryout  in  the  Puritan 
town  communities  of  New  England. 

In  the  foregoing  words,  taken  from  the  "West- 
ern Hemisphere  in  the  World  of  To-morrow," 
Professor  Giddings  shows  indirectly  the  cause 
of  most  of  the  appalling  inefficiency  in  local  gov- 
ernments in  the  past.  Neighbors  set  out  to  gov- 
ern themselves  with  traditions  of  control  ex- 
tended to  cover  ethical  vices  and  religious  sins 
as  well  as  legal  crimes;  with  political  office  an 
honor  conferred  upon  one  neighbor  by  his  fellow 
citizens,  and  with  yet  older  traditions  handed 
down  from  monarchical  society  to  the  effect  that 
the  best  government  was  the  one  which  gov- 
erned least.  Public  officials  were  loth  to  offend 
the  neighbors  who  had  conferred  honor  upon 
them  or  who  might  confer  yet  higher  honor  if 
they  were  pleased  with  the  official's  sins  of  omis- 
sion and  harmless  deeds  of  commission.  Follow 
the  health  officer  of  almost  any  American  com- 
munity on  his  official  rounds  and  watch  the  faces 


The  Political  Community  259 

and  hear  the  voices  of  the  neighbors  whom  he' 
offends  by  asking  them  to  please  live  like  civ- 
ilized white  folk — if  he  dares  as  a  matter  of 
official  duty  to  say  a  word.  The  habit  of  candi- 
dates assuming  vigorously  any  position  which 
would  "leave  me  frontin'  South  by  North"  be- 
gun when  Jaalam  was  first  wrested  from  the 
simple  red  men.  It  has  taken  almost  three  full 
centuries  for  Americans  to  find  out  that  local 
government  is  business  and  not  politics,  that 
public  office  is  a  job  dependent  on  efficiency  in 
service  and  not  on  a  man's  title  to  be  honored  by 
his  neighbors.  The  widened  scope  of  official  re- 
sponsibility and  the  narrowed  field  of  actual 
authority  wherewith  to  meet  that  public  duty, 
the  anomalous  position  of  being  held  publicly 
responsible  for  what  one's  neighbors  privately 
protested  against  having  done  at  all,  had  two 
related  effects:  it  alienated  the  interest  of  men 
who  actually  had  most  at  stake  in  effective  gov- 
ernment, and  turned  politics  over  to  sporting 
men  who  could  and  did  make  a  poker  game  of 
public  interests.  So  ingrained  is  this  political 
habit  of  mind  that  the  chief  presidential  candi- 
dates in  1916  are  ruefully  described  in  political 
circles  as  "the  ten  commandments  alive  and  walk- 
ing around,"  giving  promise  of  "poor  picking" 
for  the  faithful  followers  of  the  game. 

The  recovery  in  industry  of  the  simple  ideas 
of  efficiency  opened  the  way  to  a  recovery  in 

(18) 


260     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

politics  of  common  sense.  To  hire  trained  men 
to  manage  the  business  of  the  whole  public,  and 
to  hold  these  managers  accountable  for  results 
in  precisely  the  same  way  as  industrial  managers 
and  foremen  are  hired  and  dismissed  is  the  only 
really  democratic  way  of  conducting  public  busi- 
ness. The  whole  body  of  citizens  are  the  inter- 
ested stockholders  in  public  control  and  enter- 
prise. A  body  of  representative  citizens  chosen 
by  preferential  ballot  are  the  board  of  directors, 
trustees  subject  to  recall  by  the  body  of  citizens. 
The  municipal  manager  is  the  business  manager 
of  all  the  municipal  business,  no  more  amenable 
to  private  pulls  than  is  the  cashier  of  the  bank 
or  any  other  bonded  accountant.  Party  politics 
has  had  such  a  deep  hold  on  citizens  that  mil- 
lions of  them  even  yet  seem  to  prefer  to  be  plun- 
dered according  to  the  traditions  rather  than  to 
assert  the  rights  and  assume  the  duties  of  non- 
partisan business  citizenship.  When  the  project 
was  broached  of  eliminating  all  party  names  from 
ballots  in  the  state  of  California  a  majority 
of  the  voters  of  the  state  concluded  that  they 
could  not  trust  themselves  unless  they  were 
tied  to  some  party  standard.  The  new  age 
is  making  such  strikingly  new  demands  that 
social  and  political  control  is  sure  to  become 
a  matter  of  business,  both  in  spirit  and  in  admin- 
istration rather  than  of  gambling  on  public  weak- 
ness or  ignorance  or  indifference. 


The  Political  Community  261 

This  emancipation  of  municipal  government 
promises  more  than  release  from  the  practice 
of  government  by  the  best  fighters  and  least  fit 
to  govern.  Government  has  been  mostly,  from 
the  beginning  of  its  history,  organized  selfish- 
ness. Naturally  enough  those  who  have  private 
or  party  interests  to  protect  or  promote  have  al- 
ways made  it  a  point  to  govern  or  control  those 
who  did  govern.  Permanent  financial  and  reli- 
gious interests  have  not  been  slow  to  seek  all 
the  advantage  which  might  be  gained  through 
secret  use  of  governmental  machinery.  It  is 
sometimes  noticeable  that  these  interests  are  not 
at  all  eager  to  have  municipal  government  put  on 
a  basis  of  absolute  regularity  and  openness.  As 
a  matter  of  history  "invisible  governments"  have 
often  been  the  real  power  behind  the  machinery 
driving  the  unthinking  and  indifferent  human 
herd  into  all  sorts  of  dire  situations.  Secret 
diplomacy,  greatly  reviled  at  the  present,  is 
nothing  more  than  a  characteristic  policy  and 
program  where  citizens  are  held  to  be  unfit  to 
know  all  the  facts,  unfit  to  form  judgments  on 
far-reaching  policies,  unfit  for  self-government. 
If  Americans  are  ever  to  be  made  wholly  fit  for 
self-government  in  national  and  international 
relations  it  must  be  by  the  development  of  that 
fitness  by  a  more  efficient  self-government  in 
local  affairs.  The  scientific  management  of  pub- 
lic business   under   the   direction   of  municipal 


262     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

managers  whose  sole  right  to  tenure  of  office  is 
their  fitness  for  the  work,  seems,  for  the  first 
time,  to  put  all  thoughtful  citizens  in  position  to 
know  with  certainty  and  precision  what  govern- 
ment is  doing  and  how  and  why. 

More  than  one  third  of  the  cities  in  America 
having  a  population  of  30,000  or  more  persons 
are  now  governed  by  commissions.  The  plan,  as 
is  generally  known,  grew  out  of  the  devastation 
of  Galveston  and  the  emergency  business  organ- 
ization created  to  rehabilitate  the  city.  Des 
Moines  gave  it  wider  popularity.  It  has  advan- 
tages over  the  former  aldermanic  form  of  admin- 
istering public  business  but  its  results  have  not 
been  always  permanently  good.  As  a  step 
toward  municipal  sanity  and  civic  efficiency  it 
has  everything  to  commend  it.  The  rapid  spread 
of  the  municipal-business-manager  idea  gives 
reason  to  hope  that  the  stigma  will  not  always 
rest  upon  American  municipalities  of  being  the 
worst  governed  and  of  having  the  most  corrupt 
governments  to  be  found  on  earth. 

NEW  CONDITIONS  IN  POLITICS 
New  conditions  had  already  become  manifest 
in  America  before  the  pressure  of  changed  world 
conditions  made  it  imperative  that  closer  atten- 
tion should  be  paid  to  local  governments. 

The  projection  of  the  maternal  conscience  into 
public  affairs  is  one  of  these  conditions.  Stan- 
ton Coit,  in  the  "Soul  of  America,"  writes : 


The  Political  Community  263 

The  women  of  America,  so  far  as  I  am  aware, 
are  the  only  class  of  human  beings  in  the  world 
who  have  equipped  themselves  intellectually 
with  no  scope  for  action.  For,  while  America 
has  provided  and  lavished  upon  them  opportu- 
nities of  intellectual  discipline  and  acquisition, 
it  has  furnished  no  more  outlet  for  the  will  of 
women  than  any  other  country  has  provided. 
*  *  *  It  seems  a  moral  enormity  that  the  women 
of  America,  who  have  no  more  scope  for  volun- 
tary self-realization  in  politics,  law,  medicine, 
religion,  business,  or  handicraft  than  the  women 
of  the  Old  World,  yet  constitute  the  intellectual 
aristocracy  of  their  nation.  The  men  of  the 
country  so  will  it.  This,  on  their  part,  is  either 
a  national  madness,  or  else  they  have  been,  un- 
consciously, prophetically,  and  without  knowing 
it,  preparing  their  womankind  for  some  great  and 
significant  responsibility  which  they  had  not 
designed  and  have  not  even  foreseen.  *  *  *  jf^ 
now,  the  vote  should  be  granted  to  all  women  in 
America,  they  will  be  the  best-prepared  class  in 
the  world,  as  regards  their  knowledge  of  the  ulti- 
mate ends  and  ideals  of  human  existence.  *  *  * 
In  the  interest  of  democracy  and  of  humanistic 
religion  I  rejoice  that  the  half  of  the  population 
which  has  the  better  intellectual  equipment  and 
the  more  leisure  and  is  the  more  respected  and 
trusted  is  about  to  enter  into  full  civic  oppor- 
tunity. 

Wholly  regardless  of  the  usual  arguments  for 
and  against  female  suffrage  it  must  be  apparent 
that  when  government,  like  all  other  elements 
of  community  efficiency,  is  set  to  work  in  the 


264     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

stream  of  human  realities,  in  the  conservation 
of  the  forces  which  make  for  the  well-being  of 
children  and  youths  and  parents,  government  in 
the  hands  of  an  aggregation  of  Ladies'  Aid  Soci- 
eties could  scarcely  have  missed  the  mark  more 
completely  and  more  disastrously  than  our 
boasted  male  governments  have  done. 

Closely  related  to  this  conspicuous  new  condi- 
tion is  that  of  child  welfare  as  one  of  the  most 
important  of  governmental  functions,  national 
as  well  as  local.  And  closely  related  to  both  of 
them  is  the  rise  of  an  entirely  new  civic  con- 
science. Measuring  time  from  the  national  cen- 
tennial is  only  four  decades:  measuring  the 
change  in  civic  conscience  which  has  come  about 
during  those  decades  is  almost  like  passing  from 
one  world  into  one  wholly  different.  Regular 
practices  of  that  day  are  the  irregular  and  uni- 
formly condemned  practices  of  the  present. 
Press  criticisms  of  the  national  party  conven- 
tions in  1916  compared  with  those  of  1876  illus- 
trate both  the  new  political  conscience  and  pop- 
ular esteem  of  methods  conserved  by  famous 
"old  guards"  and  reactionaries  in  general.  The 
new  conscience  is  quickened  and  made  more 
active  and  sensitive  because  of  the  clearer  sense 
of  individual  human  values  and  of  the  social 
values  which  politics  either  endangers  or  en- 
hances. A  return  to  the  old  order  of  things  is 
impossible. 


The  Political  Community  265 

Another  condition  which  makes  the  old  life  of 
the  world  impossible  is  the  development  of  the 
scientific  method  of  thought  and  action,  of  the 
determination  to  know  things  from  their  sources 
and  origins  on  to  their  ends,  to  see  clearly  what- 
ever falls  within  the  scope  of  attention,  to  report 
accurately  whatever  is  observed,  and  to  react 
honestly  in  the  face  of  facts.  In  Huxley's  day 
this  was  a  most  brave  and  courageous  attitude  of 
mind  and  determination  of  will;  to-day  a  man  is 
made  ashamed  before  the  bar  of  his  own  judg- 
ment if  he  is  confessedly  unwilling  to  face  any 
fact  from  whatever  source  it  comes  and  give  it 
impartial  consideration.  This  habit  of  mind  is 
surely  extending,  the  more  so  as  education  is 
focused  upon  objects  more  than  upon  subjects. 
Insistence  upon  knowing  facts  as  they  are  with- 
out embellishment  puts  an  entirely  new  face 
upon  local  governmental  responsibility. 

The  sense  of  civic  stewardship  reposing  in  pri- 
vate citizens  as  well  as  in  officials  is  another  con- 
dition which  appears  to  have  found  permanent 
rooting  in  community  sentiment.  Where  ruling 
classes,  kings,  hereditary  rulers  of  all  sorts,  are 
found,  there  the  common  citizen  has  responsi- 
bility only  to  the  extent  of  not  getting  caught  at 
infraction  of  the  laws  handed  down  from  above. 
In  a  democracy  obedience  to  self-made  laws  is  a 
test  of  the  democratic  spirit  in  individuals  and 
groups.     Deliberate  conviction  that  the  present 


266     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

is  not  the  end  of  existence  but  only  a  step  "in 
the  steady  growth  of  truth,"  and  that,  with  its 
proper  increase,  it  is  to  be  turned  over  to  those 
who  resistlessly  come  after — this  conviction,  that 
the  community  is  what  it  is  now  only  that  it 
may  be  vastly  better  ten  years  from  now,  is  the 
urge  which  leads  men  on  to  larger  and  truer 
plans.  On  the  human  side  the  sense  of  stew- 
ardship is  breaking  through  domestic  and  social 
bounds.  People  are  beginning  to  feel  a  sense 
of  personal  guilt  in  the  presence  of  the  wayward, 
weak,  misfortunate,  and  criminal.  More  folk 
are  asking  themselves.  What  right  have  I  to  be 
claiming  all  protection  of  government  for  myself 
and  my  property  when  this  protection  is  with- 
held from  those  who  need  it  a  thousand  times 
more  than  I  do?  The  unemployed,  the  infant 
death  rate,  the  clumsy  efforts  of  children  and 
youths  to  find  a  place  to  play,  the  thousand  and 
one  things  which  now  challenge  the  whole  cit- 
izenship to  act  through  government  for  the  help 
of  its  individuals  and  groups  are  deepening,  hour 
by  hour,  the  sense  of  civic  stewardship. 

Closely  allied  with  this  is  the  slow  waking 
into  activity  of  the  neighborly  spirit,  the  commu- 
nity consciousness,  the  sense  of  social  responsi- 
bility which  must  underlie  the  beginning  and 
growth  of  community  conscience.  In  the  mat- 
ter of  youthful  criminals,  for  example,  tens  of 
thousands     of     citizens     protested     vigorously 


The  Political  Community  267 

against  the  hanging  of  the  fifteen-year-old  mur- 
derer in  Arkansas;  the  success  of  Mr.  Ford  in 
demonstrating  that  a  good  job  in  decent  sur- 
roundings will  reform  men  on  whom  the  com- 
munity has  put  its  brand;  the  work  of  Rollo 
McBride  in  showing  society  how  to  give  its 
offenders  a  square  deal  both  before  sending  them 
to  prison  and  afterward;  the  disclosures  of 
Thomas  Mott  Osborne  and  others  that  the  crime 
and  prison  system  of  America  has  been  a  fac- 
tory for  making  criminals  and  not  for  conserv- 
ing the  power  of  citizenship ;  the  pervasive  teach- 
ing that  changes  in  criminal  laws,  registering  as 
they  do  the  attitude  of  the  community  toward 
offenders,  are  a  sure  index  of  advancing  or  retro- 
grading civilization — these  emotions  are  leaven- 
ing communities  throughout  the  nation  and  set- 
ting conditions  for  municipal  officials  and  gov- 
ernmental functions. 

The  rise  of  the  humanitarian  movement  in  gen- 
eral is  another  source  of  conditions  which  mu- 
nicipal officials  sense  even  where  they  do  not 
clearly  understand.  The  community  is  quick  to 
give  approval  to  all  acts  of  government  which 
tend  to  ameliorate  conditions  of  existence  for 
those  who  cannot  master  their  own  environment, 
to  mitigate  the  hardships  which  too  often  fall  on 
those  least  able  to  stand  up  under  them.  The 
community  is  equally  quick  to  give  evidence  of 
disapproval  when  government  is  cold  and  unre- 


268     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

sponsive  to  human  needs.  Back  o£  the  whole 
movement  for  labor  legislation,  for  the  scientific 
examination  of  all  delinquents  and  criminals, 
for  the  treatment  of  defectives  and  dependents 
with  all  the  consideration  which  their  unfor- 
tunate state  prompts,  back  of  most  of  the  com- 
pulsion now  being  put  upon  government  to  reach 
out  many  protections  in  many  directions  is  the 
humanitarianism  whose  roots  ramify  like  those 
of  a  great  tree. 

Unfortunately,  it  must  be  confessed,  religion 
as  organized  in  Churches  did  not  play  a  very 
large  part,  indeed  a  quite  negligible  part,  in  the 
early  stages  of  modern  humanitarianism.  At 
the  same  time  it  is  to  be  regretted  that  writers 
who  set  out  to  hold  religion  to  account,  as  does 
Mr.  Maurice  Parmelee  in  the  "American  Journal 
of  Sociology"  for  November,  1915,  do  not  show 
as  much  familiarity  with  either  the  psychology  or 
the  history  of  religion  as  their  thesis  deserves. 
There  never  has  been  a  time  when  most  or  even 
much  of  the  Christian  religion  has  been  organ- 
ized in  intellectual  and  mechanical  frameworks, 
as  indicated  in  an  earlier  chapter.  He  makes 
heavy  drafts  on  his  imagination  for  his  facts  who 
would  set  wholly  to  one  side  the  quiet  power  of 
inconspicuous  religion  in  fostering  humanitarian- 
ism. John  Calvin  could  subordinate  his  human 
sympathies  to  his  logical  conclusions,  and  burn 
Servetus — ^but  there  have  not  been  many  John 


The  Political  Community  269 

Calvins.  Doctrines  and  dogmas  rise  and  fall  but 
human  sympathies  cling  close  to  the  stream  of 
human  realities — women  never  could  have  in- 
vented the  doctrines  of  total  hereditary  depravity 
and  infant  damnation  and  not  one  female  heart 
ever  sanctioned  them  even  when  male  logic  de- 
manded assent  and  conformity. 

Emancipation  of  religion  from  churchism,  the 
recovery  of  real  Christianity  out  of  the  grave 
cloths  of  churchianity  in  which  it  has  been  laid 
in  the  tomb,  is  a  condition  which  municipal  gov- 
ernments, must  take  note  of.  The  notion  is 
boldly  proclaimed  now,  where  recently  it  was 
whispered,  that  running  a  city  is  as  religious  a 
work  as  running  a  Church,  that  officials  and  pri- 
vate citizens  who  are  not  religious  in  their  civics 
are  not  religious  even  when  they  sit  at  the  com- 
munion table,  that  pious  whining  in  prayers  is 
no  recompense  for  plundering  wage-earners  or 
renting  property  to  professional  prostitutes. 
There  is  a  real  vigor  in  much  of  the  emancipated 
religion  and  politicians  of  the  old  type,  gray 
wolves  and  plunderbunds,  are  finding  to  their 
consternation  that  ministerial  associations  are 
not  always  composed,  as  they  have  assumed,  of 
nice  old  male  sisters.  Even  if  religion  played  an 
obscure  part  in  the  rise  of  humanitarianism  it  is 
playing  anything  but  an  obscure  part  in  fostering 
and  extending  it. 


270     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

All  of  these  conditions  are  summed  up,  along 
with  others  which  are  not  mentioned  here,  in 
the  revival  of  social  democracy.  It  may  be  for 
the  best  that  this  spirit  is  not  institutionalized, 
crystallized  in  one  political  party.  It  is  needed 
as  a  yeasting  force  in  all  parties  political  and 
religious.  Its  vigor  may  be  dependent  on  its 
remaining  a  movement,  retaining  its  fluidity, 
maintaining  its  complete  mobility.  What  is  left 
of  French  male  life  is  more  democratized  than 
any  other  group  of  men  on  earth.  The  whole 
available  manhood  of  France  has  gone  into  the 
trenches,  extremes  of  culture  and  wealth  made 
comrades  unto  death.  More  than  all  other  peo- 
ples, not  excepting  the  Belgians,  French  women 
and  men  and  youths  have  commanded  the  ad- 
miration and  profound  esteem  of  the  Western 
world.  It  may  be  part  of  the  compensations  for 
sufferings  as  unmerited  as  they  are  immeasur- 
able that  France  may  show  to  mankind  such  a 
social  democracy,  a  human  equality  to  which 
America  was  dedicated  but  at  which  Midas  now 
shivers  when  he  thinks  of  it — and  Mrs.  Midas 
refuses  even  to  think  of  it. 

But  the  social  consciousness  is  born,  is  grow- 
ing, is  become  strong.  Human  beings,  babies 
and  children  and  youths  and  parents,  are  kin 
throughout  the  earth.  Racial  distinctions  there 
are  which  none  but  fools  in  blind  folly  would 
deny  or  seek  to  ignore.    But  race  prejudices,  as 


The  Political  Community  271 

ancient  as  the  race  and  as  wide  as  the  habitations 
of  man,  can  no  more  blind  men  to  the  horror  o£ 
all  inhumanities.  The  four  outstanding  preju- 
dices which  have  caused  most  bitterness  and 
shock  and  clash  in  human  hearts  and  minds, 
race,  sex,  religion,  and  the  social  place  which 
economic  status  wins,  must  all  give  way,  along 
with  adult  prejudice  toward  children  and  youths 
to  the  knowledge  of  the  fact  that — 

"Mankind  are  one  in  spirit,  and  an  instinct  bears 

along, 
Round  the  earth's  electric  circle,  the  swift  flash 

of  right  or  wrong; 
Whether  conscious  or  unconscious,  yet  Human- 
ity's vast  frame 
Through  its  ocean-sundered  fibers  feels  the  gush 

of  joy  or  shame — 
In  the  gain  or  loss  of  one  race  all  the  rest  have 

equal  claim." 

Great  Asia  wakens  with  industrial  zeal  un- 
known through  all  her  uncounted  ages.  While 
Europe  is  committing  suicide  and  piling  up  Him- 
alayas for  her  weakened  children  to  surmount,  the 
Soul  of  the  Far  East  is  waking  to  a  new  sense 
of  duty  and  of  destiny.  The  Western  Hemis- 
phere has  a  world-wide  stewardship.  North 
America  seems  to  face  a  challenge  which  national 
selfishness  will  not  even  try  to  hear  and  heed. 
The  states  and  provinces,  such  kin  that  between 
them  stretches  the  longest  international  bound- 


272     Essentials  of  Community  Efficiency 

ary  on  the  planet  with  no  guns  nor  fortresses  nor 
sense  of  need  for  mutual  defense,  these  by  the 
high  level  of  self-governing  communities  devel- 
oped within  them  share  a  lesson  for  the  teaching 
of  all  communities  beneath  the  sun.  Business, 
Big  Business,  cruel,  brutal,  inhuman  Economic 
Enterprise,  has  used  navalism  and  militarism, 
German  social  organization  and  British  disor- 
ganization, Balkan  cupidity,  Italian  subtlety, 
imbruted  Russia,  lustful  Turkey,  made  itself 
crazy  with  the  blood  of  boys  and  men,  let  loose 
such  an  orgy  as  never  was  in  hell — and  now 
plans  moYe  war  of  tariffs  to  suck  the  last  drop 
of  weal  from  stricken  sufferers. 

The  biggest  business  in  any  community  is  the 
business  of  the  community.  Community  cit- 
izens, when  they  will,  can  put  the  administration 
of  community  affairs  on  a  basis  of  personal  well- 
being  and  social  welfare.  When  the  whole  com- 
munity is  pervaded  by  humane  ideals  and  of 
thoughtful  consideration,  when  government  is  a 
true  public  trust  and  no  blind  agent  of  privilege 
and  lust  for  power,  the  enterprises  within  the 
community  will  conform  to  the  spirit  of  the  place 
and  time.  When  not  one  but  all  communities 
are  harnessing  the  powers  of  wealth  production 
and  wealth  distribution  to  the  work  of  building 
health  in  babes  and  children  and  youths,  to  the 
work  of  replacing  all  ugliness  with  beauty  and 
all  filth  with  cleanliness;  when  those  who  most 


The  Political  Community  273 

need  help  are  first  set  upon  their  feet  to  be  help- 
ers of  themselves  and  others ;  when  business  men 
put  honor  and  a  square  deal  ahead  of  profit  and 
dishonesty;  when  the  obscure  processes  of  busi- 
ness are  kept  brotherly  and  not  brutal,  and 
brotherly  men  will  refuse  to  be  enmeshed  in  a 
system  whose  cruelties  they  confess;  when 
young  folk  learn,  in  short,  to  be  human  in  their 
purposes  and  aims,  human  in  their  plans  and 
projects,  human  in  their  relations  all — when 
young  folk  carry  into  their  vocations  and  avoca- 
tions minds  "wide  open  on  the  Godward  side," 
and  prove  it  by  their  openness  on  the  human 
side,  the  shell  of  selfishness  cannot  harden  fast 
enough  to  make  them  base  and  bitter  toward 
their  fellow  men.  Municipal  government,  the 
means  by  which  the  whole  group  of  citizens 
transact  their  public  intercourse  and  protect  their 
common  interests,  ought  to  be  and  can  be  the 
best  expression  of  the  best  sentiment  in  the  com- 
munity. As  this  is  done  the  ends  of  creation  are 
being  served. 


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IViAY    6  1940 

'^^^  ^  tmfA 

2Jur57Kl 

RETURNFn  TO 

^TH-STAL  m. 

JUL  Z  d  1957 

LD  21-100m-7,'39(4028) 

TB  06845 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  UBRARY 


